How would that work?
How would one recognize such?
I just was going to say that these two don't have to rule each other out. No less and no more than that. I don't want to go any further here...
Sure, but a piece of evidence that supports a great multitude of things, isn't exactly very helpful, now is it?
Well. Now we are debating the quality of the evidence, it seems. I agree: once the piece of evidence can support a multitude of things it is not the strongest evidence.
So what you want is the hypothesis to make predictions that other hypothesis don't.
No, here I am making the first step back at square one. Is or isn't there evidence at all? this is what I'm talking about here.
--------------
A testimonial is evidence in court, even if there is better evidence than that.
See
The Legal Concept of Evidence > Notes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Exactly.
The same goes for god(s).
See? You get it. At least, when it comes to any other topic then your god.
Now realize that the unicorns have the exact same evidence going for them as gods do.
It really, really, really isn't.
Your "god" finds himself on the same shelve as extra-dimensional unicorns or any other mythical beast or ghost or spirit of poltergeist or what-have-you.
Any explanation involving undemonstrable, supernatural, magical, undefendable, unsupportable, unfalsifiable entities can by definition never by parsimonious.
It can (be parsimonious).
At this stage of the debate, I'll just leave it open, which higher power that was that potentially brought that variety we're talking about. The second step would be counting out candidates.... but this is not what I am after in this post....
It's the very thing you're trying to explain. So no, the road being wet is not evidence of how it got wet. Only that it got wet. To answer the how question, you need additional data.
[...]
, I was talking about the factoid of the road being wet only being evidence of the fact that the road is wet / get wet in some way.
It is, by itself, NOT evidence of how it got wet.
All it tells you is that it got wet in some way.
some minutes ago, I was answering
@ratiocinator . She or he explains that a falsifiable prediction counts as evidence in science.
If someone asks you "Has it rained?"... and I tell you "I think it rained. Let's examine the road: I predict it is wet!" then it is a falsifiable prediction. Once you find the road wet, it is evidence for the claim that it rained.
This is not what
I said.
This is what your colleague just finished explaining. I took ratiociantors explanation of evidence.... and applied it to the wet road... and you see: it worked!
Even if as a next step you could reply that you want to examinate the trees first before believing my hypothesis....
