Re:The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Defend It
by pw201 on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @12:13PM
(#33986519)
> But even if science proposes God as the hypothesis at step 3, the next problem comes at step 4: how are you going to test it? "Um, God, could you do that again? And, um, sign it this time?" You can't run the experiment. I don't see how you could run the experiment even in principle.
There have also been things like experiments on the efficacy of healing prayers whose negative results lend credence to the idea that a god who answers prayers does not exist. https://www.noctua.org.uk/blog/2010/07/08/healing-prayer-exp... discusses that (the links to the Premier Radio forums are dead, alas).
> even if we can't see it with science, we might see it with history. We might find historical record of God doing something.
"It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages."
Then you should check your Bible ;-) because 1 Kings 18 describes just such an experiment. There's always a Less Wrong article, and this one's is https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fAuWLS7RKWD2npBFR/religion-s...
There have also been things like experiments on the efficacy of healing prayers whose negative results lend credence to the idea that a god who answers prayers does not exist. https://www.noctua.org.uk/blog/2010/07/08/healing-prayer-exp... discusses that (the links to the Premier Radio forums are dead, alas).
> even if we can't see it with science, we might see it with history. We might find historical record of God doing something.
"It is strange, a judicious reader is apt to say, upon the perusal of these wonderful historians, that such prodigious events never happen in our days. But it is nothing strange, I hope, that men should lie in all ages."