Great religious falsehoods

I believe that of the greatest falsehoods of religion, this belongs at or near the top of the list are:1. Faith is not subject to scienceThe primary reason I believe it is false: Any thing (energy, matter, entity, etc) that causes an effect can be tested. Any action by a supposed god can and should be tested. The result: there is no evidence that there is any god like entity imposing any effect upon this world or universe.I would like to hear what others think of this.Edited by jag, : Simplify, narrow the topic.

I have two problems with this thread proposal:

• Moderation is the responsibility of moderators, not thread originators.
  ​
• You are actually proposing two different topics.

Please edit Message 1 to remove the statement of rules, and to remove one of the topics. Post a note when you're done and I'll take another look.

---

--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Is that what you requested?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I think that God is the missing factor X whenever there's no answer to a particular question.If scientists cannot explain something then that missing info (X) is God.Science is making God weaker though, with each scientific discovery God is required less and less.

I agree that that's a false claim of religion. Science isn't leaving it alone, anyway. Apart from what you give as your primary reason, neurology, psychiatry, psychology and anthropology have plenty to say about religious faith, and even from genetics there are noises about possible genes that might make some individuals more inclined to religiosity than others.Science certainly won't leave it alone, whatever the desires of our faithful brethren!

Hello Brian and bluegenes,
Part of the problem is that many who have chosen their beliefs, or more likely had then chosen for them by parents, society, and peers, simply will not examine the facts. Saying faith is not subject to science is a dishonest dodge.I have seen shows where Dawkins debates someone rather politely, then a person in the audience accuses Dawkins of being to aggressive and disagreeable. That is just another turn to avoid the real questions at hand.Religion has not yielded to any rational and polite arguments in the last several thousand years. The arguments against religion need to be raised to a higher level in assertiveness and insistence. There is a risk of transitioning into aggressiveness. In general that is bad. But religion has been extraordinarily aggressive over the centuries to say the least.We need to find ways to force an evaluation of the scientific facts, while being wary, but neither frightened or timid, of the emotional response. I’m not good at doing that. When I do it, I come across as playing NIGYYSOB.Have you found any way to state the evidence in such a manner that it cannot be ignored? (I may be hallucinating, but I continue to have hope.)Meanwhile, I am wondering if anyone will weigh in with an opposing statement.

I did not know there was such a thing as a scientific fact.I do think however there is a Biblical fact. In Hebrews 9:27 it tells us it is appointed to men once to die. I find only two excetions to the rule but nobody believes the Bible anyway.But the last time I checked the death rate was 100%. Nobody gets out of this world alive.Welcome to EvC jag.You don't need a way to force anything concerning scientific facts.Now hypothesis paraded around as theories are another story.You are not going to get many Creo's to embrace those and you should not get any Scientist to accept them.On the matter of faith it would take more faith for me to believe in the method we got to where we are today that is presented here than to believe the alternative.God Bless,

---

"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

How would you test some'thing' that operates in a way that is unpredictable, unrepeatable, empirically untestable, etc?

quote:

---

How would you test some'thing' that operates in a way that is unpredictable, unrepeatable, empirically untestable, etc?

---

Simple, examine it and test it under differing circumstances until you understand what causes it to be unpredictabe, etc. Then control those variables and test it such that it is repeatable. A computer program may seem all the above, until you closely examine the code and understand why it operates as it does.However, in practice, we often do not have the knowledge of how to test things. Just because we lack that knowledge, does not mean it is not testable. We test what we can and tease what knowledge we can from our tests.This is so self evident that it does bear stating: Science does not know everything. There are many unknowns and we do the best we can. The unknown areas do not invalidate the known ones.Good comment iano. I hope my reply was equal.

What's that? Religious faith? I can predict that amongst the next generation of Irish people, as yet unborn, more will follow the Christian faith than any other religion. (Substitute Egyptian for Irish and Islam for Christian, same prediction, etc.). Would you bet against me?So, surely this thing called faith is not entirely unpredictable.Other mental states, conditions and cultural phenomena are observed in a scientific manner. Why not religious faith?

But they have already chosen their conclusions, and they only recognise ”evidence’ that supports their conclusion. It is called cognitive dissonance. Look at the people who believe in the Flood narrative as being a true historical event, which other event in the entire Bible has been so thoroughly discredited? The entire tale (or two tales since the story is an amalgamation of two independent tales), has been shown by science, archaeology, and history to be fiction, but there are many people who ignore the huge mountains of evidence against the Flood and clutch to silly ideas like baby dinosaurs aboard the Ark and there’s a boat shaped object somewhere on Ararat. But the majority of creationists are dishonest, but it is really only themselves that they are being dishonest with. Apart from the obvious con artists such as Kent Hovind, Ron Wyatt, and a whole collection of other crooks who are deliberately conning gullible people out of money (although Wyatt is dead his friends are living off his corpse). The people who believe a single thing that these con artists say are being dishonest with themselves, they are not genuinely seeking the truth at all, they are seeking any piece of evidence that supports their already gained conclusion, this is the dishonesty. I think part of the problem is that many of the people we discuss things with here are really not equipped with the skills to recognise what a strong argument is. It seems too much of a coincidence that the creationist type that frequent here and other boards are patently very poorly educated. I don’t mean to sound harsh but that really is something that is very obvious to me. How many Christians appear here and tell the well qualified scientists at this site that evolution is simply wrong, then when discussion follows it becomes clear that the Christian really has no idea what they are talking about, it happens all the time. And it isn’t restricted to science, look at the recent ”logical argument for the existence of God’ thread, the author claims to use logic to prove there’s a Divine Creator and proceeds to present arguments that are not even logical arguments!I think if science was being applied to why people have faith then it is pointless employing scientific method. However, if we wanted to examine individual components of that faith then science (as well as history and archaeology) can be used.For example, if someone claimed that their faith is strong because everything in the Bible is 100% accurate therefore it is logical to believe in God, then we can disprove that stance. Science, archaeology, and history have shown much of the Bible to be inaccurate, and if the person who takes the inerrancy stance refuses to accept the clear evidence provided by these disciplines then they are being dishonest with themselves.

The computer codes output is inherently predictable - it justs takes you time to figure that out. That's different to something which is inherently unpredictable. It would seem that the less machine like and more own willed something is, the less predictable it is.Then there is the empirically non-testable. A thought is a thing but cannot be tested for empirically. You can only take my word for it that I thought what I thought 2 seconds ago.- Fair enough. A day might come when something like thoughts are rendered visible to others (perish the still-invisible thought). But to suppose that that must be the case, that everything is testable in principle is to engage in mere speculation.It might well be that at the end of the pursuit of knowledge there lies only mystery.- I agree. One of the bolts Science cannot undo is the bolt to which it's wrench won't fit. This is not to say that the bolt doesn't exist or that it doesn't function perfectly well as a bolt. It's just says that Science is limited to Science-sized bolts. Which is problematic for this: No evidence acceptable to Science you can only mean.

Absolutely not. But just because someone self-identifies with the Christian faith doesn't mean they are a Christian as defined by God. You might glean some evidence of this from the fact that Ireland self-identifies with the Christian faith to the tune of 90% or so. Of the 20,000 people living in the town where I go to church, perhaps 500 people in total attend church.People don the Christian faith thus due to parentage and tradition. But God has no grandchildren.So, you'd first have to figure out a way to test for a God-defined Christian so as to discern faith from 'faith'. That would be extremely problematic.

How do you know? You're defining your God and your faith the more you say about them, and the more you do that, the more a good psychologist or cultural anthropologist would have to work on.Let's look at your first post. Is your faith unpredictable? You make a lot of comments about your God, what he does and doesn't want/do etc., so someone should be able to get a pretty good fix on the iano faith.Certainly, this is usually something for study by the "soft" rather than the hard sciences, except where they overlap (as in psychiatry/neurology) for example.Religious faith can certainly be studied scientifically, I maintain.Indeed, it is being studied: And a fascinating study it makes