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Desrtopa comments on Rationality Quotes July 2011 - Less Wrong
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Upvoted the quote. It can be a fun exercise to find rationality lessons in unlikely sources. (Last thread someone posted a Baron Harkonnen quote and it got many upvotes. Of course, it wasn't explicitely marked as Baron Harkonnen quote, just as a Dune quote, so I wonder how many people realized.)
After all, within the fictional narrative in which the Jesus thing is true, those other people were better at changing their minds than the apostles he was addressing.
It can be a fun exercise, but I think that sometimes creates a bias in favor of interpreting quotes too generously. Even in the context of a narrative where Jesus's abilities are real, believing in them on the basis of hearsay would still be a poor treatment of evidence; it's not as if there weren't plenty of other purported oracles and prophets whose powers were fake.
Well, imagine we're not talking about the Bible, but some fantasy novel. I assumed that within that kind of a fictional context, there would be a big difference between a real prophet and the usual religious kooks, and the recognition of that difference would be at least somewhat contagious to people who haven't witnessed it themselves.
But I suppose you're right, I was being at least a little too generous. Interpreting that quote in terms of rational ability to respond to evidence was an entertaining stretch, but in the end it's still a stretch.