[QUOTE=tomndebb]
No. For somethingto be credible, (literally, “able to be believed”), it is only necessary that the believer not find an impediment to belief. People who believe in a virgin birth or a resurrection may be relying on an expectaion that their sources for that belief are reliable, but they are hardly relying on proof or material evidence.
I suspect that you may have a slightly skewed perception of the word “credible.” Clearly, to a person who requires material evidence, a lack of such evidence makes a concept incredible to that person, but the same concept may be quite credble (believable) to a person who does not demand the same evidence.
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Tom, your indulgent definition of the word “credible” is typical of the “intellectual free ride” that religion gets on these boards and in society in particular.
You are essentially saying that “credible” implies no objective standard outside of each individual’s willingness to believe something.
The minute a person sees no objection to believing something, as soon as they feel they have it on good enough authority, then it is “credible”???
Therefore, the belief by a mental patient that he is Napoleon is “credible” by your definition. If he further argues that his identity was confirmed by the extra-terrestrial who speaks to him through his toothbrush and in whom he has utmost faith, then he suits your definition of a person holding a “credible” belief with all the evidentiary support *he * considers necessary.
But is that really all “credible” means? :dubious: I have before me a copy of Webster’s Dictionary that defines “credible” as “worthy of credit; probable”.
Note the difference here. There is an inference that something we qualify as “credible” must meet certain objective, evidentiary rules founded in science, and in common sense. It needs objective evidence to make it worthy of credit, to demonstrate that probability is in its favour.
To take a similar example, “Commendable” means “worthy of praise”. Now, we know that convicts who have killed policemen are often regarded as deserving of praise by other inmates in the prison system. But no normal person would apply the word “commendable” to the murder of a policeman. Obviously, we are applying an independent standard of commendability that is derived from morality, decency and common sense. The fact that the murder of a policeman may strike some thugs as “worthy of praise” hardly qualifies the act as “commendable”.
Now, Mormons choose to believe the BofM’s stories of a Christian Nephite civilization in North America from 33 to 420 CE, or that millions of “Jahredites” libved in the Americas, worked in iron, and perished by the sword, in spite of the fact that their beliefs are not supported by a shred of archeological evidence. Archeologists can find Indian villages of a few huts that exsited 5,000 years ago but we can’t find Nephite cities that existed until 420 CE??? :dubious:
If Mormonism did not exist as an established religion, and therefore enjoy this “benefit of clergy” we give to the irrational beliefs of religion, people who believe what they believe about the history of pre-Columbian America would be considered crackpots. And further to believe that this information comes from gold plates that Joseph Smith found in the ground at the prompting of an angel would qualify these believers as either gullible or crazy.
Just because large numbers of people believe something and are satisfied that they have this “truth” on good authority does not justify using the adjective “credible” to describe their views. After all, over a billion Christians believe Jesus was the Son of God. Billions of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. believe he was not. Can both of these mutually contradictory propositions be “credible” using Tomndeb’s definition of the word?
