“What sort of evidence would you accept?”

There are a great number of things I don't believe. Discussions about these with people who do believe tend toward a familiar impasse. They can't understand my rejection of their beliefs, and I can't understand their definition of evidence. Eventually it comes to this question. This is one of a few questions I hate, the worst of which is “Why?” but more on that another day.

Whenever someone asks me “What sort of evidence would you accept?” I find myself giving a clumsily qualified answer in order not to sound unreasonable. The things I disbelieve lack evidence that meets any useful definition of the word evidence. That's the primary reason that I disbelieve. In most cases, there really is evidence, and it all says no. Trying to explain that dimension to this problem leaves the believer with the impression that I'm dismissing their evidence unfairly. I asked for evidence, and they brought me some! How can I say they don't have any evidence? It's right there! OK, true believers, to make sense of this failure to communicate, I take you to a court room in session.

Judge: Is the defense prepared to enter a plea?

Defense Attorney: I'm sorry Your Honor, but I don't know what's going on here. We don't have a client.

Judge: What are you talking about? State vs. Credence Woo, I've got the papers right here. Where's the defendant?

Defense Attorney: Seriously, Your Honor, we've been trying to figure this out for a while now. There doesn't seem to be anyone named Credence Woo. Honestly, we're not even sure how the DA managed to bring this case in the first place.

Prosecuting Attorney: That's ridiculous! We have sworn affidavits that he murdered three people in broad daylight.

Defense Attorney: We've looked through those as well. None of them agree about the facts of the case, and anyway, they aren't sworn affidavits. They're anonymous descriptions. One of them seems to be mostly plagiarized off another, with a few contradictory additions.

Judge: How are we even having a trial if the defendant doesn't exist?

Prosecuting Attorney: He does! There's plenty of other evidence. Haven't you seen the photographs?

Defense Attorney: Those aren't photographs. They're drawings. And they don't even look particularly similar to one another. Oh, except that one, but that's a photo of Brad Pitt that's been Photoshopped quite badly. Anyway, that's not even the real problem. We can't even confirm that this murder actually took place at all. We do know that two of the victims named in the case did exist and are dead, but as far as we can discover, they died several years apart in different states, not at the mall downtown two months ago. On top of that, the prosecution's proposed method of murder is physically impossible.

Prosecuting Attorney: No it's not. Look, if you understand quantum mechanics, you'll see that--

Judge: OK, I'm just going to stop you right there. If I don't let you finish that sentence, it will remain in a state of superposition, so there's a 50% chance it's not bullshit. It can be Schroedinger's argument, both bullshit and not bullshit until an observer collapses it into nonsense. Now someone please tell me what we're doing here if there's no defendant and no confirmed murder.

Defense Attorney: Actually we did find evidence of a murder at the mall on that day, Your Honor. Well, it was near the mall, and took place very early in the morning. There were four victims, not three, none of them the ones named in this case, and it looks like it was done by a small group, not a single person. Tragic, but it looks like an interesting case, and no one is currently investigating it except us.

Prosecuting Attorney: No, stop dismissing me! You're just not looking at the evidence. You need to keep an open mind and really dig into the evidence I've got here.

Judge: I'm getting the impression you don't understand what evidence is. Are you even familiar with standards of evidence?

Prosecuting Attorney: Fine then. What sort of evidence would you accept?

Judge: At this point, you've demonstrated that you don't know how evidence works. There is zero real evidence in favor of your case, and the defense has uncovered a different case that you're not working on. That seems irresponsibly close to obstruction of justice if you're letting someone else get away with murder in favor of this nonsense. I'm going to throw out this whole case as a mistrial. You would not only have to bring good evidence in favor of your case, but now you would have to find evidence that contradicts confirmed facts that we've already established. Case dismissed.

If it helps you to interpret who is analogically who here, I'm the Judge. I'll let you figure out the rest.