Emphasis on Testimony Betrays Falsehood of Christianity

Those who have evidence show evidence; those who don’t appeal only to personal anecdotes

You may be wondering: if a product has a lot of testimonies supporting it, wouldn’t it add credibility to that product? When we browse around online shops like Amazon for stuff to buy, we often look for ratings. If there are a lot of reviews, and the ratings are good, we tend to have more confidence in that product. On the contrary, if the product only has 2 stars out of 5, we may quickly skip it. This habit of checking ratings usually saves us time in finding good products and sellers. (Some sellers cheat on this, but let’s not get into that.)

Why then, would I claim that testimonies actually reveal Christianity’s falsehood?

The key lies in how much emphasis is placed on it.

When scientists make a new discovery, how do they share the wonderful news with their peers or with the public? Do they say, “Our team just found a new way of measuring the x value in the atmosphere that would make predictions of weather more accurate. We know this is true because 80% of our team members report having a more meaningful life after this discovery”?

Or do they say, “We did hundreds of testing, and we find that incorporating the variable x into our weather prediction model makes prediction 2–3% more accurate than the current model (at 95% confidence interval), p < .0005”?

Can you see the difference between the two?

Evidence trumps stories in fact evaluation

When it comes to the verification of facts, personal testimonies don’t matter that much. People are prone to cognitive biases. Confirmation bias leads a person to overlook or forget signs or facts that are inconsistent with their belief and dwell on those that support their belief. Narrative bias leads a person to establish a cause-and-effect connection when, in fact, there isn’t any connection at all.

All these biases distort reality in the person’s mind, thus rendering their testimonies unreliable.

What matters is hard data, the outcome of carefully controlled experiments or studies. There are good reasons why academic journals do not include personal testimonials as evidence to support a scientific theory.

To be sure, witness accounts are admitted in judicial courts, but experts also caution that they are not always reliable, especially if there is no corroborating material evidence. Human memory is not very reliable.

Stories trump evidence in emotional impact

It does not mean personal testimonies have no place anywhere. When you want to sell your product to the public, making it attractive by presenting testimonies to potential customers increases the likelihood of a sale. When the advertisement touches viewers’ hearts (the strength of personal stories), they are more likely to take out their credit cards.

That’s why you see a lot of testimonies in TV and radio commercials, even in calls for humanitarian aid.

Many of us have seen the photo of a drowned Syrian child whose family tried to flee from their war-torn country to Greece. It is a powerful picture. Even as I am typing this article and reviewing relevant information online, my vision keeps getting blurry.

Compare that picture to this recent news report: At least 70 dead in latest ‘tragic’ shipwreck, off Syria coast.

As you read the title of that news report, do you get 70 times more saddened compared to seeing a photo of the deceased Syrian boy mentioned above?

If you are like the majority of people, when you see the number “70 dead”, you don’t react half as strongly as seeing the photo of a child lying face down by the water.

Our brain is wired such that our emotions are more susceptible to the influences of personalized stories than statistical numbers. It‘s called the identifiable victim effect.

But facts are facts. Just because we get more emotional because of one death over 70 deaths, it does not mean 1 is larger than 70. If our goal is to get our facts straight, personal stories may actually interfere with our evaluation process.

Testimonies are ok if there is actual evidence to back them up

There is nothing wrong with showing a drug commercial featuring a patient becoming so happy after taking the drug or a professional doctor dressed in white robes using an authoritative tone to recommend the drug IF that drug’s efficacy has already been tested and approved by the responsible agency.

But suppose the drug has not been rigorously tested and its chemical influence on the human body has not been well studied and documented, then using personal testimonies to sell that drug is not only procedurally inappropriate but also morally questionable.

Testimonies may be misleading if there is no hard evidence

Now, back to Christianity. We heard tons of testimonies about how God answers prayers, but do we have hard data on the efficacy of prayer? Do we have results of controlled experiments on prayer consistent with those testimonies? No and No.

Shady merchants selling snake oils or essential oils can also produce testimonies on the healing power of their products, but if anecdotal stories are all they have, common sense tells us they should not be trusted.

In the same manner, if a Christian approaches you and testifies to the power of prayer in their life, you should ask them: “Do you have hard data to support your claim of the efficacy of prayer?”. If they cannot produce any, you should treat their testimonies as no more credible than testimonies of snake oil.

It’s not just the credibility of answered prayers. We also hear a lot of testimonies on positive changes in Christians’ lives. People’s marriages got better after they start attending church. People reporting their lives are more fulfilling now after conversion. Etc.

But when was the last time you hear Christians announcing some newly published studies confirming their claims? “Look! Statistical analysis shows that Christians are 30% less likely to get a divorce.” Nope.

You don’t hear Christians talking about hard data because hard data usually do not corroborate their stories. It does not matter how strongly Christians claim they emphasize family values or how many testimonies they have for better family relationships, the divorce rate of Christians in the U.S. is about the same as the national average.

It does not matter how many ex-gay testimonies conservative Christians advertise in their cultural war against the LGBTQ movement, the only known effects of sexual orientation conversion therapy are increases in participants’ anxiety, depression, and rate of suicide.

How about the instances of faith healing we sometimes hear from, for example, the ministries of Benny Hinn? Well, there is a reason why those healing services are not carried out in hospitals, but in regular conference rooms or auditoriums. The reason is that a lot of those healings are the result of psychological tricks. Derren Brown has successfully demonstrated the power of such tricks repeatedly, to the audience who knows it’s all tricks and no supernatural intervention. If you are interested, you can watch his show called Derren Brown: Miracle, available on Netflix.

The bottom line

When people don’t have hard evidence, but still use anecdotal stories to try to sell their grand narratives, they risk losing credibility and respect from the wider community. Christians should not be exempt from such consequences.

Christians can appeal to faith all they want, but at the end of the day, if they have enough evidence to show Christianity is the best explanation, why would they need faith?

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