Great religious falsehoods

The problem with trying to scientifically test God is that a scientific claim needs to be falsifiable in order to be science.If there wasn't an omnipotent God, what would we expect to see in our Universe? How would we know the difference from a universe with an omnipotent God? How can we test this?I don't think that you can come up with good testable, falsifiable predictions about an omnipotent being - as He could get around any test!This is why God cannot be scientifically tested.

That wouldn't be testing God though, would it? It would be testing properties of God that even then deal with abstract concepts (maybe the prayer failing is because God felt they didn't deserve healing, etc).By definition an omnipotent being can do anything - this means you cannot falsify Him, because He always has a way around the test! Therefore God is unfalsifiable, and is completely outside the realm of science. (Along with fairies and unicorns of course.)

God is not falsifiable. You cannot prove God wrong. This means that God is untestable. This means that God is completely 100% outside the realm of science.

Which statement of these two of mine do you disagree with:1) As an omnipotent being, God can get around every test, and is therefore unfalsifiable - you cannot prove he doesn't exist.2) Falsifiability is a requirement for testability which is a requirement for scientific inquiry.

Nor do I. I'm an atheist. That has nothing to do with it.However, the claim "There exists an omnipotent being, called God" is ultimately unfalsifiable. As He would be omnipotent, He can get around any sort of test one could attempt to impose.You can't put something omnipotent in a box and try and test it.Therefore, as the claim that an omnipotent being exists is unfalsifiable, it is completely unscientific - outside of the realm of science completely, along with astrology and fairies.

Well you're getting ahead of yourself now by wanting evidence.We have the claim "An omnipotent being exists" (called God for purposes of discussion).Before we go off trying to test this claim (thus gathering evidence), we need to look at the claim and see if it is testable. It isn't. That's testing prayer though, not the existence of God. Prayer is indeed testable (or at least the claim that prayer can bring about results in the physical world). On paper, anyway. The problem is that you're dealing with an abstract concept - maybe God has His reasons for not answering prayers. Maybe He only doesn't answer them when under examination, because He doesn't want to be so obvious, preserving free will. You can always wiggle out of it because you have something that by definition can do anything.It's sort of like the pretend fights you had as a kid."I shot you!"
"Nuh uh, I dodged it!"
"Yeah well I have heat seeking bullets you can't dodge them!!!"
"Yeah well I have diamond armour!"
"Yeah I have diamond bullets!!!!"Your shot will never get through, sorry So the concept of omnipotence and God are unscientific (hence why I don't believe in them) - they lie outside of the realm of science.

See, now that you're dealing with abstract concepts with love, you can't really say that you're doing science anymore. Love isn't something that we could reasonably come up with an objective workable definition with.You can still use logic and reasoning, but now you're doing philosophy and not science.

sl33w, by "geological evidence" Nosy Ned meant a link or reliable source detailing these banks in the Himalayas, rather than just "I saw it on the TV once" so we can discuss it properly.