“Confirmation of a person’s unreliable statement by another unreliable person makes the statement even less reliable.”
Part 2 “Four Subjective Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Prophecy (and the Bible Codes)” (p. 65)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)
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John Allen Paulos48
American mathematician 1945Related quotes
David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand
Referring to Jim McLay's comments on the effect of the nuclear ships ban on the exchange of military intelligence with New Zealand's allies.
Source: Gliding on the Lino: The Wit of David Lange, compiled by David Barber, 1987.
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician
"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)
William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: p>We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.</p
Larry Correia (1977) American fantasy writer
in all caps <br class="br">"How Authors Get Paid, part 2", Monster Hunter Nation http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/06/25/how-authors-get-paid-part-2/, 2015-06-15
Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman
The Personality of Jesus (1932)
Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist
Otto Neurath (1931), "Soziologie im Physikalismus", in Erkenntnis, Vol. 2. p. 403; as cited in: Schaff (1962;84)
1930s
Umaru Yar'Adua (1951–2010) President of Nigeria
Winner of Disputed Nigerian Presidential Election Denies Fraud http://web.archive.org/web/20070527110842/http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-04-23-voa59.cfm (April 23 2007)
Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer
The View. March 5, 2012.
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