God & the Fairy Tree

That is often the case. We gather more evidence. The perturbations of of other visible objects nearby should continue to be consistent with the planet hypothesis. If they become inconsistent then we might consider the planet hypothesis falsified. It depends on the nature of the hypothesis. If the hypothesis requires that Neptune be reflecting a certain amount of light then it does effectively falsify that hypothesis.

Falsifiability is not an exact thing - we can always add extra entities to our hypothesis to save it from falsifiability. That is why we include the principle of parsimony in science. Something becomes unfalsifiable when no matter what evidence surfaces in the future, it can be consistent with the hypothesis.Fairies? If we get physical evidence of them: consistent with the fairy hypothesis. If we don't get physical evidence: this is consistent with the fairy hypothesis (because we might have added the extra entities: they have the property of shy/quick/flying/possibly invisible at will.).A hypothesis that has 'magic' in it somewhere will often come to the point where it cannot be falsified since any evidence that logically exist would be taken as further confirmation of the hypothesis regardless of the nature of that evidence. There might be something out there is a general possibility, not really a hypothesis. We see evidence that something is out there, so we start to build a hypothesis to describe that something. We might end up with a hypothesis that says that something is massive and should reflect light from the sun. That is easy to falsify: Simply find something. That might be practically difficult, of course, but that doesn't mean that the falsification is not trivial to see once finding something has taken place. It depends on how you view the world really. It all comes down to your opinions on parsimony. A building could have an invisible fairy pushing from the north, east, south and west with equal force but we'd never know. Since there is no way to detect these fairies, they are unfalsifiable. As they are unfalsifiable and unnecessary to explain why the building doesn't topple over - they are considered unparsimonious entities.Sure - if you are using a philosophy that gives equal value to entities whose framework means they don't need to leave any evidence than to those that leave evidence and subject themselves to falsifiable hypothesis...that is fine. However, that kind of philosophy shares many characteristics with the philosophy many children develop. It is a childlike philosophy, or - as the OP terms it 'immature'. This is because the philosophy allows for the imagination to be a guide to the world.

I don't believe in God and I really do 'feel the presence of God'. The only difference is that I don't associate the elating feeling of wonder and awe and insignificance etc etc I get from thinking about the cosmos with being evidence of an entity with a personality which created the whole shebang. There is though: They feel a feeling of greatness or an elated sense of wonder and decide that must be a divine being with a son called Jesus, who spoke with Abraham, and who answers prayers (indirectly). The thing is: we are putting them in the same room. Children sometimes believe in fairies and we call that belief childish. Gullible people believe in psychics and spoon benders. We call them childish or gullible....unless they say their religion is 'spiritualism' or 'paganism' and then that for some reason shields their beliefs from the same level of criticism.

Why wouldn't we be having this conversation? When I was a Christian I thought that feeling was the Holy Spirit entering my soul. When I was seriously considering Islam I thought it was the power of Allah and his benevolence. When I was a Buddhist I thought it was satori, when I was a spiritualist I thought it was the Cosmic Consciousness.How I interpreted the feeling depended on my belief system at the time. This isn't 'wow, look at the stars'. This is being reduced to tears at the shear intensity of life and the beauty of the cosmos. This is not a simple appreciation of nature, this is a temporary but very powerful cascade of emotions that cannot be described but can only be experienced.For all the attempted descriptions by religious people, it seems they experience God in a similar fashion that I did. Of course they don't, and I wasn't trying to say they do. They take the feeling of divinity they get from contemplating whatever it happens to be (in Francis Collins's case it wasn't stars it was a frozen waterfall if I recall correctly), and associate that with the descriptions of a great deity found in Bronze Age writings. Isn't really applicable here. For the example to be analagous it will have to take place at a haunted place. Then the excuse would be 'you are giving off negative thoughts' or some such. This is because in the example we are at the fairy tree and we are in the presence of God. We can be very quiet approaching the tree, or ask for a sign from God - but we'll always be too loud or not have enough 'Godsense'.Of course it is always a possibility that one of these random excuses turn out to be accurate, but there is no reason to believe them anymore than you would have any reason to believe me if I tell you about the gold coins that turn to brass when you open the purse. Why is it different when it is spoke aloud rather than written down on a sign?

And how would they determine that? At what point are they imbued with the knowledge that fairies are real? If that ever happened then it would differ drastically from the God analogy since we have not been imbued with such knowledge.As it stand we have the same information about God as we do about the fairies: Childish people and eccentric groundskeepers believe in fairies without any evidence. The eccentric groundskeepers may try and convince you he has actually seen the fairies but that's just a little creepy and we humour him in case he's batshit insane. Then we laugh at him around the dinner table this evening.There is less chance of the mockery if he had said he had seen Jesus/God, and that is the inconsistency para is talking about.