Horse or Unicorn — When Testimony Counts as Evidence for God

Testimony and Evidence for God: Matching the evidence to the claim across classic arguments, the historical Jesus and the Gospels.

Tom Jump tests arguments for God with a principle readers of Objective Morality Without God? single out: if someone says they saw a horse down the street, believing them is reasonable, but if they say they saw a unicorn, it is not. In Tom's model of epistemology, testimony is only evidence for things that already have an empirical basis, just as empirical claims need empirical evidence, conceptual claims need conceptual evidence and metaphysical claims need metaphysical evidence. Tom applies that test to the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments, the historicity of Jesus and the reliability of the Gospels, explaining from the believer's own perspective why each argument does or does not work. Christian hosts get a good-faith disagreement on the arguments their audience knows best, and listeners leave with a test they can run on any claim they hear.

About Tom Jump

Tom Jump, podcast guest

Atheist Philosopher, Debater & Author

Tom Jump is an atheist philosopher, debater and author whose YouTube channel, TJump, has 32,000 subscribers. Tom tackles some of the biggest questions at the intersection of religion, reason and ethics, engaging with Christian theologians, philosophers and other thinkers on the existence of God and the foundations of morality.

What sets Tom apart is Jump's distinctive approach to debate: rather than relying solely on familiar atheist objections, Tom evaluates religious arguments from the perspective of the people who make them. Jump's work challenges the assumption that objective morality requires belief in God and explores how people distinguish sound evidence from flawed reasoning.

Tom is the co-author of Objective Morality Without God? and founder of the Church of the Best Possible World, a secular initiative built around Tom's model of morality. Tom Jump is especially suited to podcasts that welcome rigorous but accessible conversations about atheism, Christianity, evidence, objective morality, the meaning of life and whether belief in God is reasonable.

Podcast hosts can expect a guest who is comfortable with disagreement and direct debate. Tom is particularly interested in speaking with Christian or religious audiences and discussing questions such as whether there is evidence for God, what morality is, how moral claims can be grounded without a deity and how competing worldviews should be evaluated.

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