But that's the point. God claims can be redefined. Religion doesn't follow the same rules science does. It can move the goalposts because it's not playing the same game as science. The claim that God created eve from a rib of adam may at some time have been literally believed, but there are few christians who would still assert that is literally how it happened today, i think.DracoSuave said:But the definite determination of the existence or nonexistence of the extrauniversal would not change anything. You would just be moving the goalpost.Saxnot said:What we CAN say, however, is that because such a notion is currently untestable, that it is not of scientific interest. Current falsifiability cannot be confused with future falsifiability, especially given that we do not understand THIS universe enough to make ANY comment (positive or negative) on the existance of the extrauniversal.
If we determine for sure that god does not exist outside the universe, then a religious person could say he exists inside it, inside every person, or that science simply can't percieve him.
That's a problem with the lack of definition of 'God.' More exact definitions can be tested.
The problem in this instance isn't the falsifiability of the claim--it's in the lack of a claim. Something that is so poorly defined that it the goalposts could be moved THAT MUCH is not actually a claim of belief. One cannot belief in 'whatever'.
Who cares?Or if we determine there is a christian god outside the universe, that would probably (ironically) lead to some denominations of the abrahamic faiths to reject his legitimacy, saying that if he is the god of the catholics, he can't be the god of the protestants/muslims/jews. This without even mentioning the nonabrahamic faiths.
That's no different than how creationists don't like evolution--it doesn't make evolution any more or less valid based on the evidence.
By corollary, those same denominations can probably use the same tests to determine the specifics relative to their denominations.
Would there going to be people who don't like the results? Sure. Would people going to deny it in defiance of the evidence?
Absolutely.
But does that make the tests invalid? Of course not--that's an irrelevant argument.
Wrong.God is unfalsifiable because he does not require a place to be or an existence outside our minds to be real to people.
If you happen to believe in a god named Thor and part of that belief is that he fights Jotun and creates thunder by tossing Mjolnir, you've made a testable claim. We can study thunder and its causes and see that there is no hammer or other malleistic source. We can do a study of humanoids and look for evidence of ice-giants within them. There's all sorts of tests-for-Thor we could create due to the nature of the claim.
As a result, Thor is a falsifiable claim.
Whether or not someone can hallucinate Thor is irrelevant to that.
Now that I've demonstrated that there exists a god-claim that is fallsifiable, I have also thus proven that god claims CAN be falsifiable. Now you can make a different god claim--or even a different claim about Thor, but that just means you're redefining Thor to be something else--it does not mean I have not falsified the Thor claim I was given. It only shows the god-claimant is arguing dishonestly.
In other words:
As there exists a God claim that can be falsified, it is therefore untrue that all god claims are unfalsifiable.
Religion can shift it's claims around because factual asserions being true is not nearly as essential to them as it is to science. Religious faith does not stem from factual accuracy. it stems from belief in something higher and/or the spiritual/moral message of a holy book. It happens a priori to the process of checking the facts. Belief in science happens a posteriori to checking the facts.
That is why god is unfalsifiable. Not because you can't make up terms of falsification by reading the holy books, but because those terms can be shifted to change their meaning without fundamentally damaging the underlying faith.