Why are all theistic claims untestable?

[Justin108]

"God exists"
"The Bible is the word of God"
"Prayer works"
"Miracles happen"
"There is an afterlife"

Why are all theistic claims untestable?

[William]

[Replying to post 9 by Justin108]

To be more precise, by "theistic claims" I mean exclusively theistic claims. That is, claims only made by theists. Claiming Jesus, a historic figure, said something is not an exclusively theistic claim. It is also an historic claim.

Why should it matter? Jesus is regarded as a theist and Jesus is regarded as having made claims as a theist.

Why should the fact that the claims are historic make them non theistic and none testable?

Very true. But, like the Bible itself, the results are usually vague and open to interpretation (at least according to the theist). Just as if one were to point out the scientific flaws in Genesis, a theist will come along and make all sorts of excuses involving metaphors and selective interpretation. Similarly, if I were to point out that believers often die from starvation, thereby disproving what Jesus said, I promise you a theist will come up with various excuses for why Jesus was actually right.

The example I gave is something which can be tested. I have done it myself so I know what the results were for me and assume that they can be replicated.
But feel free to pick and choose as you please. It occurs to me that your reasoning for NOT wanting to test certain things because 'Theists and their interpretations' will only bring one to conclude that no test is worth doing, under such assumption.

Are you looking for a reason not to do tests, which implicates theists as the bad guys preventing this from happening?

[Mithrae]

Nevertheless, could you define what you mean by 'testable'?

Do you mean testable by all scientists at any moment they choose (ie. unconstrained repeatability)?

Not necessarily "at any moment they choose". Testing the effects the moon has on tides, for example, cannot be done at any given moment. But it is, nonetheless, testable.

Do you mean confirmable as a plausible and best hypothesis through empirical and logical analysis?

This would also suffice, though I do stress the word "confirm".

Then as noted above rapid, medically-unexplained cures in a religious context have been confirmed to occur through a process of careful documentation and professional medical evaluation - "miracles happen."

Empirical and logical evaluation of theism as a plausible and best hypothesis is also relatively straightforward when presuppositions like dualism and physicalism are kept in perspective, a hypothesis confirmed to a high level of confidence by the occurrence of miracles - "God exists."

Is my claim to own a cat testable in the sense you have in mind?

Yes. Show me your cat.

Is the claim that our significant others love us testable?

That depends on your definition of "love"

Are economic or socio-political theories testable?

That depends on the specific economic or socio-political theory. The theory of supply and demand is certainly testable.

Or if claims like those three are not 'testable,' what value or merit does that criterion have for most people, most of the time?

The OP is not asking what the value of testable claims are, the OP asks why theistic claims are untestable.

Fortunately, it seems that they are testable; some of them at least, and certainly moreso than the alleged existence of my so-called cat

[Justin108]

Then as noted above rapid, medically-unexplained cures in a religious context have been confirmed to occur through a process of careful documentation and professional medical evaluation - "miracles happen."

Do you consider all medically-unexplained cures to be miracles? Cancer remission for example. Are all cases of cancer remission miraculous? There's a reason skeptics usually demand limb regeneration as proof of prayer. Unlike disease, the sudden regrowth of a limb simply cannot occur naturally. Diseases are far less understood. If you prayed for your cancer to go away and it does, then this is not proof of a miracle. However, if you pray for your limbs to regenerate and they do, then there simply is no other explanation for this occurrence. Yet for some reason, that has never happened. Why? I assure you, people have prayed for limb regeneration.

[Justin108]

To be more precise, by "theistic claims" I mean exclusively theistic claims. That is, claims only made by theists. Claiming Jesus, a historic figure, said something is not an exclusively theistic claim. It is also an historic claim.

Why should it matter? Jesus is regarded as a theist and Jesus is regarded as having made claims as a theist.

Why should the fact that the claims are historic make them non theistic and none testable?

I never said that historic claims are automatically non-theistic. I specified that I am specifically interested in exclusively theistic claims. That is, if a claim is both theistic and historic, then I am not interested. I am only interested in claims that are exclusively theistic and not considered outside of said religion as factual.

Very true. But, like the Bible itself, the results are usually vague and open to interpretation (at least according to the theist). Just as if one were to point out the scientific flaws in Genesis, a theist will come along and make all sorts of excuses involving metaphors and selective interpretation. Similarly, if I were to point out that believers often die from starvation, thereby disproving what Jesus said, I promise you a theist will come up with various excuses for why Jesus was actually right.

The example I gave is something which can be tested. I have done it myself so I know what the results were for me and assume that they can be replicated.

If a claim is tested, one should be able to accept both a positive and a negative outcome as evidence. That means that if you test something (like prayer), you should be equally prepared to conclude, based on your test, that prayer is either effective or ineffective. This is what is known as falsifiability.

For example, you pray for something
- if your prayer comes true, then prayer probably works
- if your prayer does not come true, then prayer probably does not work.

This is how testing a claim is normally done. However, in reality, when a theist tests this claim, it looks something like this.

You pray for something
- if your prayer comes true, then prayer works
- if your prayer does not come true, then God probably had his reasons but prayer still works

See the difference? When a theist tests a divine claim, they are never prepared to accept a negative outcome. When a theist tests a divine claim, they will always pollute the test with confirmation bias.

But feel free to pick and choose as you please. It occurs to me that your reasoning for NOT wanting to test certain things because 'Theists and their interpretations' will only bring one to conclude that no test is worth doing, under such assumption.

Fine. Give me a way to test a theistic claim. What should I do to test it? How can I identify a positive outcome? How can I identify a negative outcome?

Are you looking for a reason not to do tests

I will gladly do a test. Just stipulate what I need to do to test a theistic claim and I will gladly do so.

[Mithrae]

Then as noted above rapid, medically-unexplained cures in a religious context have been confirmed to occur through a process of careful documentation and professional medical evaluation - "miracles happen."

Do you consider all medically-unexplained cures to be miracles? Cancer remission for example. Are all cases of cancer remission miraculous? There's a reason skeptics usually demand limb regeneration as proof of prayer. Unlike disease, the sudden regrowth of a limb simply cannot occur naturally. Diseases are far less understood. If you prayed for your cancer to go away and it does, then this is not proof of a miracle. However, if you pray for your limbs to regenerate and they do, then there simply is no other explanation for this occurrence. Yet for some reason, that has never happened. Why? I assure you, people have prayed for limb regeneration.

On a related note, would you mind sharing your thoughts on the hypothetical in my earlier post?

"If scientists of future decades unanimously confirmed that human brains somehow attracted/generated a field of, say, dark matter which could somehow be demonstrated to remain coherent and retain most memory and personality traits after death of the ordinary matter body, we can all too easily recognize the probability of folk calling it a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with any kind of deity."


A philosophical naturalist might suppose that everything which occurs is ultimately a 'natural' phenomenon, just as a religious person might suppose that everything which occurs is ultimately an 'act of God.' Quite possibly both suppositions are technically correct, but obviously so broad as to be meaningless. I have no doubt whatsoever that if half a dozen cases of limb regeneration had been confirmed, many folk would therefore insist that it's something the body can occasionally do, somehow, even though it's not medically explained

That kind of presuppositionalism doesn't really deal with what appears to be asked in the thread topic however.

When prayer and faith appears - occasionally - to be answered with rapid, medically-unexplained cures of serious illness, I rather suspect that it fully and completely fits the claim of what a miracle would look like. I have rarely if ever seen someone specify that the nature of a 'miracle' must be such that it excludes even the faintest possibilities of any supposedly 'natural' explanation in future centuries! That's a sceptic's moving goalpost, not the theist claim.

[Justin108]

"If scientists of future decades unanimously confirmed that human brains somehow attracted/generated a field of, say, dark matter which could somehow be demonstrated to remain coherent and retain most memory and personality traits after death of the ordinary matter body, we can all too easily recognize the probability of folk calling it a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with any kind of deity."

In post 8, I clarified my OP. Proving some kind of dark matter afterlife is a far stretch from Biblical claims of heaven.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if half a dozen cases of limb regeneration had been confirmed, many folk would therefore insist that it's something the body can occasionally do, somehow, even though it's not medically explained

And I have no doubt that I would not be part of these "many folk", especially if these cases of limb regeneration were preceded by prayer.

When prayer and faith appears - occasionally - to be answered with rapid, medically-unexplained cures of serious illness, I rather suspect that it fully and completely fits the claim of what a miracle would look like.

It also fits the claim that illness is not fully understood and these anomalies tend to happen, even among non-believers and those who do not pray.

If cancer remission is proof that prayer works, then how do you explain cancer remission among unbelievers? Are you of the opinion that only believers experience rapid, medically-unexplained cures of serious illness?

I have rarely if ever seen someone specify that the nature of a 'miracle' must be such that it excludes even the faint possibility of any 'natural' explanation in future centuries! That's a sceptic's moving goalpost, not the theist claim.

How do you define "miracle"?

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 15 by Mithrae]

On a related note, would you mind sharing your thoughts on the hypothetical in my earlier post?

"If scientists of future decades unanimously confirmed that human brains somehow attracted/generated a field of, say, dark matter which could somehow be demonstrated to remain coherent and retain most memory and personality traits after death of the ordinary matter body, we can all too easily recognize the probability of folk calling it a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with any kind of deity."

I'm going to step in and ask...where, in your hypothetical, is there mention by these future scientists of a deity?
I see none. I see talk of dark matter, of it somehow retaining what is essentially our ego. That is what these future scientists are confirming.
Where is God in all of this? So even if future scientists do *precisely* what you say there, why should we say that it has something to do with a God?

I have no doubt whatsoever that if half a dozen cases of limb regeneration had been confirmed, many folk would therefore insist that it's something the body can occasionally do, somehow, even though it's not medically explained

We have prior results to work off of. Every single time in the past (either medical or otherwise) some thing was unexplained, it eventually was able to be explained naturally.
A thousand years ago, people in various parts of the world attributed thunderstorms to various gods. The Norse believed it to be Thor throwing his hammer around at his enemies for example.
For a long time, natural explanations didn't cut it, until eventually they did.

I rather suspect that it fully and completely fits the claim of what a miracle would look like.

Oh? Define for us please what a miracle is. I fully expect the answer to be something along the lines of "not conforming to known physical laws of nature" i.e. allowing for a God of the Gaps.
If I transported a Middle Eastern Jew from 2,000 years ago, and showed him my computer and me talking via Skype to someone halfway across the planet, from his point of view, that would be a miracle. He can't explain it naturally (i.e. without a god being involved). He'd insist that God is involved somehow because quite clearly the real world just does not allow for people on different continents to communicate face to face via what look to be mirrors of some kind.

Now...doesn't that attitude sound familiar? Why...it's quite similar to what I hear from creationists, and how they insist that we just HAD to have been created by God. Their attitude is that the real world just could not have anything do with us evolving from microbes, that the real world doesn't operate like that, they and no-one else can explain it (just ignore the many times we do just that! )

I have rarely if ever seen someone specify that the nature of a 'miracle' must be such that it excludes even the faintest possibilities of any supposedly 'natural' explanation in future centuries!

I typed "What is a miracle" into Google and here's what I got

an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

From ChristianCourier.com
http://www.christiancourier.com/article ... t-miracles
How does one define a miracle?

A miracle is an event which the forces of nature—including the natural powers of man—cannot of themselves produce, and which must, therefore, be referred to a supernatural agency (Fisher 1900, 9).
A miracle is a divine operation that transcends what is normally perceived as natural law; it cannot be explained upon any natural basis.

From request.org.uk
http://request.org.uk/jesus/miracles/wh ... miracle-2/
When Christians talk about a miracle, they mean an event that is not ‘normal’ – that is, one that should not be able to happen according to the laws of nature.

Or even from Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle
A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out).

That's a sceptic's moving goalpost, not the theist claim.

If anything, what I got there was from theists. Note the times it said things like "cannot happen according to the laws of nature" (or words to that effect). Notice that there is no stipulation that the laws of nature have to actually be known/understood, just that nature cannot do these things.

[McCulloch]

Is it true that all theistic claims are cannot be tested?

For example, the bible says that Jesus said some things to his followers about doing something in faith which would produce something in fact.

Jesus said something about moving mountains. He also chastised his followers for not being able to walk on water. James talked about healing the sick and making rain.

Jesus said that one didn't have to worry about not having any money as the heavenly father would provide food and clothing and shelter.

The truly amazing thing is that since Christianity began in the first century, not a single faithful Christian has ever been homeless, starving or without suitable clothing. This is a truly remarkable fact. I am constantly astounded that Christian apologists do not make more of this.

[1213]

Here is one claim that can be tested:

"My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone desires to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or if I am speaking from myself."
John 7:16-17

How would we go about testing that?

It seems to say, by doing God’s will.

[rikuoamero]

Here is one claim that can be tested:

"My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone desires to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or if I am speaking from myself."
John 7:16-17

How would we go about testing that?

It seems to say, by doing God’s will.

Okay, so given that you are a Christian, and that you are doing God's will, try moving a mountain or two for us please? Oh, and by the way, try to limit the collateral damage as much as possible!