No.
You said you would not accept anecdotal. You called it "Useless." The exact word, if I recall, was "uselessness."
Where
exactly did I say I would not accept anecdotal evidence for belief? Yes, if all you have is anecdotal then it is useless, but even though the status of being an atheist must be anecdotal, the condition of an imminent threat of death is not necessarily.
You said you wanted "solid evidence."
Later, you said you would accept anecdotal as to beliefs, when I pointed out that you cannot get anything other than anecdotal.
I only ever said I wanted solid evidence for an imminently life-threatening situation. It is only your ongoing straw man, which I have corrected numerous times now, that has deceptively tried to connect that statement to belief. Obviously you cannot comprehend simple English, are a quote-mining troll, and/or have a poor memory.
Syne said:
If the evidence is only anecdotal then it is not statistically significant enough, in itself, to make a valid argument.
Can't get any more consistent than that, and that quote is from the first page of this thread. I never refuted that there could only be anecdotal evidence of belief. You're simply arguing with yourself and your own fictitious straw man.
This is actually the first exchange explicitly on the necessarily anecdotla nature of subjective belief:
Syne said:
I accept a veteran's self-reported belief at the time of injury at face value.
Neverfly said:
There is no empirical evidence for a person's subjective belief. In which case, anecdotal evidence is acceptable, as it is the only available form of evidence.
I was actually the first to point this out. Care to lie any more?
What is your motive? Like it or not, you strongly come across as one who doubts the meme.
Clarify it.
I've already told you my current motive:
Syne said:
My current intent is simply to see if atheists can live up to the ideals they profess when in a similar situation as a theist. So far, you've reacted exactly as I'd expect a theist to.
I only set out to question if that picture was enough to close the book on the issue, as it seemed to be employed. Only after you started arguing without evidence did I find the contradiction of an atheist arguing like a theist interesting. If you have any atheist ideals about objective evidence, they seem to have abandoned you.
You say bits and pieces through the thread. You say that anecdotal is useless and that you want evidence of injury.
There are clear problems here: Threat of Imminent Death does not mean there are outward visible injuries. In fact, most of the time there are not.
It's a faulty assumption on your part.
I NEVER said threat of imminent death required such visible injuries (and I already corrected seagypsy for this same straw man). I said that PERMANENT DISABILITY WAS
OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE of imminent threat of death. But of course, you can't give up your fictitious straw man long enough to realize that this is the ONLY thing I've sought "solid evidence" for.
Service records that show Combat experience and psych records (It's not a red herring so don't roll your eyes) are far more likely to demonstrate whether or not a soldier has experienced imminent death and whether or not their mind was altered by the pressure.
Injuries can show that they were injured, but were not necessarily facing death- they were facing a lot of PAIN maybe, but not death.
You have already agreed that a person's mental state, i.e. belief, can only be anecdotal, thus the red herring. Hell, you affirmed this in this same post. The difference between pain and facing death are exactly why I specified permanently disabling injury. This is the best assurance of having faced death.
I was hit by a grenade near Tuzla, Bosna y Herzegovina.
I've been stabbed once, (Not while in the service) and shot twice (While in the service.)
Now, unless I'm naked, you'd never know this. Unless you look at medical records- you won't know this. I do not walk funny from it (was hit in the leg on one occasion, small of my back, the other). I have some visible scar tissue, but it's in areas that unless I'm wearing high legged and low backed shorts you won't see it. (Save your comments about how I got shot in the ass, please, BigDon ran that through the mill and it was NOT in the ass.)
As you've said yourself, this evidences pain, but not necessarily facing imminent death.
Your ideas of what constitutes "Solid evidence" are faulty and misleading.
Then to turn around and say anecdotal must be accepted at that point, when a photo of someone with disabling injuries counts as solid evidence of having faced imminent death makes no sense. Yes, imminent death may lead to permanent injuries. But one can quite easily get permanent injuries without facing death and even get them quite easily when unconscious.
Which is COMMON by the way.
Lastly, many permanent injuries received were not on the battlefield. One man I knew was pinned between a tree and an M1-Abrams, during routine field maneuvers. He was not "In a foxhole." Many soldiers get into routine Traffic accidents. Most of them did not face Imminent death, though they faced a hell of a lot of discomfort.
You may as well have accepted anecdotal evidence at the outset for all the good it would have done you.
Service records reporting combat experience and psych reports are a much better source for the kind of evidence you say you require.
Yet, you call them a red herring and focus on injuries that demonstrate only injury- not threat of DEATH. Many life threatening situations can be documented but don't leave physical scars.
Many physical scars do not stem from life threatening situations.
If he was not "in a foxhole" then obviously it was not a valid condition of the saying. I've already fully address this red herring of accidents and other such injuries. Go back and read through this thread again.
Of what, permanently disabling injury? I was pointing out that Atheists don't convert under fire any more than theists do, nor do they survive the experience any better or worse than any theist(though closing your eyes to pray could have serious negative consequences in battle). At what level of injury are you claiming the conversion takes place? If you're claiming a part of an ear and a few shrapnel wounds I can tell you that the level must be higher, too busy trying to see if the REALLY important parts were intact, looking for arterial squirting, while my head was ringing like a bell, trying to make myself as small as possible in the gun well of a fibreglass hull, while my bosun walked all over my head getting to the 50 and the jarheads unleased hell from the stern with 40mm and 16s, watching the skipper backing and filling and the blessed acceleration when he put the hammer down and our problem dissapeared behind us. God never came up, before, during or after. Never gave it a thought.
I've already fully explained the criteria, i.e. permanently disabling combat injury.
Can anyone around here quit quibbling long enough to just provide any such evidence. You people are arguing about the nature of evidence just like theists do. Dodge, parry, repose.
