Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Paul of Tarsus
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Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Post by Paul of Tarsus »

If you're familiar with Christianity at all, then you're unlikely to be told anything that you can falsify about it. Consider the following format for a claim that can be falsified:

Do A.
B should result if you do A.
If B is not the result of doing A, then you know that "B should result if you do A" has been falsified.


The Christian version on its claims takes this format:

Do A.
Supernatural event B (miracle, revelation, etc.) will result if you do A.
If B is not the result of doing A, then believe "Supernatural event B (miracle, revelation, etc.) will result if you do A" anyway. It's your own fault that B didn't happen because you are a faithless sinner and/or God has a plan that does not involve B for you.


The claim is then deemed to be true regardless of the outcome of A.

Another Christian version I've seen recently takes yet another format:

Do A which as far as you can tell has never been done or cannot be done.
Supernatural event B (miracle, revelation, etc.) will result if you do A.


Of course this claim cannot be falsified because doing A is impossible!

So why are all Christian claims unfalsifiable?

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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Post by Difflugia »

tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:49 pmSure, but if something being falsifiable depends upon no one coming up with justifications, then probably nothing in the universe can be falsifiable.
That's right. That's why being falsifiable is considered a benchmark of honest invesitgation. Tacking on enough special pleading ("The phrase, 'Judas bought a field,' can really mean that the priests bought it.") can render any claim unfalsifiable, but that's the difference between inquiry and dogma.
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:49 pmBut IF someone found an original document and it contained error, then it would be proven false. So it is falsifiable. At some point, original documents existed.
That's what I said; it's falsifiable in principle, but it is so unlikely that any originals have physically survived, let alone will be found if they did, that it's not falsifiable in practice. "Santa Claus lives on Proxima Centauri b" is also falsifiable in principle because someday someone might be able to travel there and then live long enough to search the entire planet.
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:49 pmIf that is the meaning of falsifiable, then all claims that Christians make are falsifiable: simply by one going to the source (Christ) to find out what is or is not true. Ask Him.
Whether or not the rest of us can, if you believe that you can talk to him and he'll omnisciently answer questions with information external to you, that's falsifiable, both in principle and in practice. I collect ink pens and just wrote down a number with one of them. If you wouldn't mind, could you ask Jesus what number I wrote and which pen I used to write it?
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:49 pmIf one is unwilling or unable to ask and listen (due to a lack of faith or something else), but there is indeed a means to confirm if something is true or false, then the claim is falsifiable - going by what you said here. And I agree with that.
Any of us could also just ask Santa Claus where he lives.
Last edited by Difflugia on Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Post by Difflugia »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:10 pm
Difflugia wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:17 pm
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 3:56 pmThe claim 'the bible is inerrant' is a falsifiable claim. Just find an error.
As we've seen repeatedly in discussions in these forums, this is equivocating a bit. In the ways that most peopleuse and understand language, that's true, "the Bible is inerrant" is falsiable, and it has, in fact, been falsified.
Can you post an example of something the Bible claims that has been falsified?
If Genesis 1-11 are anything other than complete fictional allegory, they're false. There's no firmament between the "waters above" and "waters below." All known species didn't arise within a few days of each other and if the days are "ages," they appeared in the wrong order. Human beings arose as an evolutionary population over millions of years rather than as a single pair. Snake locomotion was already "on their bellies" long before the apes were a twinkle in some tarsiiform's eye. There was no global flood, no eight-person population bottleneck in human history, and the radiation of human populations was vastly more complex than the members of one immediate family marching off in different directions. Even as allegory, the table of nations is wrong. Canaanites and Egyptians should both be Semites, not Hamites related to either central African Cushites or Mesopotamian Sumerians. Philistines were not Canaanite, but both genetic testing and Biblical tradition (Jeremiah 47:4) places their origin in Europe.
Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:10 pm
In practice, however, inerrantists use language in unorthodox ways to prevent errors from being described as such. Inerrancy can be presented in ways that are falsifiable and it's trivially easy to falsify when it is. Any presentation of Biblical inerrancy that hasn't been falsified is almost certainly unfalsifiable in practice and probably in priniciple.
From what I've studied in the Bible, there's almost nothing in it that as far as I know can be falsified. The Bible is so vague, strange, and ambiguous, that testing it is almost impossible. Is the resurrection of Christ an error? Is Jonah wrong when he said he spent three days in a whale's belly? Did Moses err when he wrote that Noah built an ark? Is it a mistake to say that at the Last Supper Christ told his apostles that one of them is a devil? If we are told to find an error in a set of works written like the Bible is written to falsify the claim that the Bible is inerrant, then we are asked to do what is probably impossible. If it is impossible to determine if the claim that the Bible is inerrant is false, then it's an unfalsifiable claim.
Much of the ambiguity is read back into the Bible by apologists as a form of special pleading. Things that are obviously false are claimed to be ambiguous, despite not being any more ambiguous than any other text. If the arguments of inerrantist apologists are correct, then neither the Bible nor any other written text can be counted on to mean what it says. The infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, for example, are completely irreconcilable and one must be false. Matthew has the Jesus family travelling from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth. Luke has the family travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and back. Even if we try to posit some meandering, back-and-forth journey to reconcile the itineraries, Luke includes such timing details that there's no way to interleave the accounts.

One must be false. Apologists will claim that ambiguity allows them both to be true, but they must ignore all language convention to insert their own ambiguity into the accounts. The claim as written ("the Bible contains no errors") isn't unfalsifiable, but only becomes so when a hidden set of special pleading arguments are added in ("the Bible contains no errors if we're allowed to reinterpret any phrase any way we want").
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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

Post #43

Post by 1213 »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 8:22 pm I can certainly understand your feeling that way. If I was a Christian, I wouldn't be enthusiastic about this debate either....
Sorry, you have misunderstood, I have no problem with the debate. The problem is with the idea of falsifying something. It is not useful for anything really. Or can you show one example where it is useful and works?

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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

Post #44

Post by otseng »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Fri Jun 11, 2021 1:39 pm
otseng wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 8:55 pm
Paul of Tarsus wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 7:42 pm What you're saying here is more a claim about your own beliefs than of Christianity.
Yes, it is my personal belief, but at least there is an objective way to falsify it.
How could we tell if your belief collapses?
As I mentioned, this forum will no longer operate. I will shut down the forum.
What's unclear about my description of typical Christian claims?
Claiming "Supernatural event B (miracle, revelation, etc.) will result if you do A [pray, fast, read the Bible]" is not a core tenet of Christianity, nor a view held by scholars, nor even relevant to the truth of Christianity.
The claim is that Christ rose from the dead. Since it's impossible to prove he didn't rise from his grave, then that claim is unfalsifiable.
If your criteria is proof without any doubt, then sure, even Christ's resurrection cannot be considered a way to falsify Christianity. But, outside of math, one cannot really prove anything. So, given this, there is practically no field that can be falsified.

But, if you do not require 100% certainty, then there are ways to demonstrate Christ did not rise from the dead. This is claimed by Christians to be an actual historical event. So, you can disprove it like trying to disprove any historical event.
Anyway, my whole point in starting this discussion is that Christianity is based on unfalsifiable claims to safeguard it from disproof. If Christianity was based on facts, then it could make falsifiable claims and be confident that those claims will withstand testing.
One thing interesting about Christianity is that claims made in the Bible are far from unfalsifiable. Most of the Bible is written from a historical narrative point of view. It goes to great detail in giving names of people, times, locations, and events. If their intention was to make things unfalsifiable, why would they risk writing something that is subject to verification? In particular, claiming someone physically rose from the dead would be highly risky if the writer's intention was to safeguard it from disproof. If I were to write it and make it unfalsifiable, I would've just said he rose from the dead spiritually, not physically.

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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

Post #45

Post by otseng »

Difflugia wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:20 am If Genesis 1-11 are anything other than complete fictional allegory, they're false. There's no firmament between the "waters above" and "waters below." All known species didn't arise within a few days of each other and if the days are "ages," they appeared in the wrong order. Human beings arose as an evolutionary population over millions of years rather than as a single pair. Snake locomotion was already "on their bellies" long before the apes were a twinkle in some tarsiiform's eye. There was no global flood, no eight-person population bottleneck in human history, and the radiation of human populations was vastly more complex than the members of one immediate family marching off in different directions. Even as allegory, the table of nations is wrong. Canaanites and Egyptians should both be Semites, not Hamites related to either central African Cushites or Mesopotamian Sumerians. Philistines were not Canaanite, but both genetic testing and Biblical tradition (Jeremiah 47:4) places their origin in Europe.
There's a lot here to unpack, but I'm convinced Genesis is true regarding creation of the universe, origin of mankind, and a global flood. Too much to discuss regarding all of these, but we've touched on many of these topics elsewhere.

As for special pleading, modern science is not innocent in regards to this either. If science does not understand something, they'll say, "We don't understand it now, but science will explain it in the future." Or if science posits something that exists that cannot be seen or detected, then just call it "dark".
The claim as written ("the Bible contains no errors") isn't unfalsifiable, but only becomes so when a hidden set of special pleading arguments are added in ("the Bible contains no errors if we're allowed to reinterpret any phrase any way we want").
Actually, I agree with this. The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is a case where special pleading makes that doctrine untenable.

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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

Post #46

Post by Paul of Tarsus »

Difflugia wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:20 am
Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 8:10 pm Can you post an example of something the Bible claims that has been falsified?
If Genesis 1-11 are anything other than complete fictional allegory, they're false. There's no firmament between the "waters above" and "waters below." All known species didn't arise within a few days of each other and if the days are "ages," they appeared in the wrong order. Human beings arose as an evolutionary population over millions of years rather than as a single pair. Snake locomotion was already "on their bellies" long before the apes were a twinkle in some tarsiiform's eye. There was no global flood, no eight-person population bottleneck in human history, and the radiation of human populations was vastly more complex than the members of one immediate family marching off in different directions. Even as allegory, the table of nations is wrong. Canaanites and Egyptians should both be Semites, not Hamites related to either central African Cushites or Mesopotamian Sumerians. Philistines were not Canaanite, but both genetic testing and Biblical tradition (Jeremiah 47:4) places their origin in Europe.
That's a great summary of the science and history that is relevant to Christian and Biblical claims, and I personally don't disagree with any of it. However, within the context of the Bible and Christian theology, science cannot falsify any Christian claim. Why not? Christians believe in an all-powerful God and a powerful and deceptive Devil as well as foolish unbelievers. If fossils, geological dating, or evolutionary biology appear to conflict with any Christian claim, then such apparent disconfirmation of beliefs can be seen as a test of faith from God, the wiles of Satan, or the foolishness of "natural men" who cannot understand God. So unfortunately, science can do little to falsify any Christian claim.
Much of the ambiguity is read back into the Bible by apologists as a form of special pleading. Things that are obviously false are claimed to be ambiguous, despite not being any more ambiguous than any other text. If the arguments of inerrantist apologists are correct, then neither the Bible nor any other written text can be counted on to mean what it says. The infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, for example, are completely irreconcilable and one must be false. Matthew has the Jesus family travelling from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth. Luke has the family travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and back. Even if we try to posit some meandering, back-and-forth journey to reconcile the itineraries, Luke includes such timing details that there's no way to interleave the accounts.
I think you might be underestimating the ability of Biblical apologists to smooth over problematical Bible passages. I'd recommend you check what apologists have to say about the difficulties you cite. I've found that such apologetics can be absurd, but as long as apologists can come up with explanations, no matter how improbable, that can reconcile Bible discrepancies, it's good enough for them. All you can do is disagree with them.

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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Post by Difflugia »

otseng wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 10:17 amThere's a lot here to unpack, but I'm convinced Genesis is true regarding creation of the universe, origin of mankind, and a global flood. Too much to discuss regarding all of these, but we've touched on many of these topics elsewhere.
I understand.
otseng wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 10:17 amAs for special pleading, modern science is not innocent in regards to this either. If science does not understand something, they'll say, "We don't understand it now, but science will explain it in the future." Or if science posits something that exists that cannot be seen or detected, then just call it "dark".
"I don't know" isn't special pleading. "Dark matter" is a hypothesis that's still being tested. Suggesting something new and then looking for ways to falsify it isn't special pleading. Apologetic literature tends to present it that way because most apologetic arguments based on science are ultimately "god of the gaps" arguments ("you can't explain this thing, therefore God"). The "I don't know" antiapologetic argument is pointing out that "I don't know" isn't evidence for God.
Actually, I agree with this. The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is a case where special pleading makes that doctrine untenable.
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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

Post #48

Post by Difflugia »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:50 pmHowever, within the context of the Bible and Christian theology, science cannot falsify any Christian claim.
The question as you asked it was for things in the Bible that have been falsified, not whether Christians accept the falsification. Those passages in the Bible have been falsified by any reasonable standard. The Christian claim that they haven't been falsified is by redefining "falsified" in a way that cannot be met, even in principle.
Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:50 pmWhy not? Christians believe in an all-powerful God and a powerful and deceptive Devil as well as foolish unbelievers. If fossils, geological dating, or evolutionary biology appear to conflict with any Christian claim, then such apparent disconfirmation of beliefs can be seen as a test of faith from God, the wiles of Satan, or the foolishness of "natural men" who cannot understand God. So unfortunately, science can do little to falsify any Christian claim.
There are reasonable, scientific standards of evidence. "Anything is possible" leaves the field wide open. As a heuristic, "p < 0.05" is a pretty good standard for eliminating the chaff. It's still possible that God did it as a test of fait, but that possibility is somewhere within that .05 along with every other answer (like random chance or a different god did it). At least in part, the Bible's been falsified to a scientific standard. If a Christian insists on a different standard, that may render their argument unfalsifiable, but that doesn't change the scientific one. All that means is that these two statements can possibly be true together, despite appearing contradictory at first blush:
  • The Bible is unfalsifiable by a certain Christian standard.
  • The Bible is not only falsifiable, but has been falsified to a scientific standard.
Again, your challenge was to present passages of the Bible that have been falsified. Since you didn't qualify it, I took that to mean to a a reasonable standard, even if Christians implicitly make the challenge to an unreasonable standard.
Paul of Tarsus wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:50 pmI think you might be underestimating the ability of Biblical apologists to smooth over problematical Bible passages. I'd recommend you check what apologists have to say about the difficulties you cite. I've found that such apologetics can be absurd, but as long as apologists can come up with explanations, no matter how improbable, that can reconcile Bible discrepancies, it's good enough for them. All you can do is disagree with them.
I'm pretty sure I don't. I collect apologetics books, in particular the best and the worst. I mean, there are too many mediocre apolgists that just aren't trained or sharp enough to spot common fallacies in their arguments, but the "good" pile means there's an argument that takes me a while to spot. The "bad" pile is those apologists that are so unaware that I would find their arguments embarrassing if I made them.

The distinction that I was making to tam and then to you is that without the subsequent redefinition, many Christian claims, particularly ones about the Bible, are falsifiable. The final form of the argument may be unfalsifiable, but it's not actually the argument that was presented in the first place and only appears so because of one or more subsequent equivocations, often on the standard of falsifiability itself.
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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Post by Paul of Tarsus »

otseng wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 9:59 am
How could we tell if your belief collapses?
As I mentioned, this forum will no longer operate. I will shut down the forum.
OK, but again, your claim is not a Christian claim. I should add that although your claim is strictly speaking falsifiable, you've set the bar so high that for practical purposes it might as well be unfalsifiable.
What's unclear about my description of typical Christian claims?
Claiming "Supernatural event B (miracle, revelation, etc.) will result if you do A [pray, fast, read the Bible]" is not a core tenet of Christianity, nor a view held by scholars, nor even relevant to the truth of Christianity.
In that case you don't mean that my description of typical Christian claims is vague but that it's not in keeping with your understanding of Christianity. I didn't make up that description but based it on what Christians have told me and on what I've read in the Bible. For example I have read John 14:
13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me[a] for anything, I will do it.
If you object to this kind of theology, then you should take it up with Jesus.
The claim is that Christ rose from the dead. Since it's impossible to prove he didn't rise from his grave, then that claim is unfalsifiable.
If your criteria is proof without any doubt, then sure, even Christ's resurrection cannot be considered a way to falsify Christianity. But, outside of math, one cannot really prove anything. So, given this, there is practically no field that can be falsified.
A good example of a falsifiable claim is this: Heat water to 100 degrees Celsius, and it will boil. All you need to do is heat the water, check its temperature when it boils, and see if that temperature is 100 degrees Celsius or not. Anybody with a stove, pan, and cooking thermometer can easily falsify this claim. You can prove it in your kitchen. Are there any such Christian claims?
But, if you do not require 100% certainty, then there are ways to demonstrate Christ did not rise from the dead. This is claimed by Christians to be an actual historical event. So, you can disprove it like trying to disprove any historical event.
I wasn't aware that historical events can be disproved. I ate lasagna yesterday. Please disprove it.
One thing interesting about Christianity is that claims made in the Bible are far from unfalsifiable. Most of the Bible is written from a historical narrative point of view. It goes to great detail in giving names of people, times, locations, and events. If their intention was to make things unfalsifiable, why would they risk writing something that is subject to verification?
Your question is loaded because it assumes that events are necessarily verifiable. Getting back to that lasagna supper, I ate it with my brother Steve yesterday evening at 6 PM in my apartment. I have mentioned the names of the people involved, the time, the location, and the event fulfilling all your criteria for falsification. Now, please falsify my historical narrative.
In particular, claiming someone physically rose from the dead would be highly risky if the writer's intention was to safeguard it from disproof. If I were to write it and make it unfalsifiable, I would've just said he rose from the dead spiritually, not physically.
You could easily post all the details of Christ's resurrection and remain very safe from having your story falsified. Did you ever notice that the gospel writers never mention the location and precise time of the resurrection? They missed two of your criteria for falsification! But regardless of what details they tell us, we cannot falsify the story. Heck, we can't even falsify the story by arguing that the risen Christ isn't around--he went up to heaven, remember?

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Re: Christian claims are unfalsifiable.

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Post by JoeyKnothead »

Difflugia wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 6:17 pm
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 3:56 pmThe claim 'the bible is inerrant' is a falsifiable claim. Just find an error.
As we've seen repeatedly in discussions in these forums, this is equivocating a bit. In the ways that most peopleuse and understand language, that's true, "the Bible is inerrant" is falsiable, and it has, in fact, been falsified. In practice, however, inerrantists use language in unorthodox ways to prevent errors from being described as such. Inerrancy can be presented in ways that are falsifiable and it's trivially easy to falsify when it is. Any presentation of Biblical inerrancy that hasn't been falsified is almost certainly unfalsifiable in practice and probably in priniciple.
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 3:56 pmThe claim 'the bible is inerrant' in its original documents is falsifiable if one can find original documents and if there is an error in them.
Since the likelihood of finding an "original document" is vanishingly small, this is not falsifiable in practice, even if it is in principle. It's like claiming that Santa Claus lives in the next star system over and all one has to do is go there and look. The star system exists and is finite, so someone could in principle travel there (if one had the means) and search the whole thing (if one lived long enough). The claim is unfalsifiable in practice, though.
tam wrote: Sat Jun 12, 2021 3:56 pmI am not concerned about something being falsifiable, mind you. I am concerned with truth. Something being unfalsifiable does not mean that it is not true. I came across the following link and thought others might find it interesting: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/falsifiability/
It just means that we have no way of actually knowing if it's true. We can't say that an unfalsifiable thing isn't true, but in the absence of any evidence, it's no more likely to be true than any other speculation. "God is real" is on par with "Santa Claus has a summer home on Proxima Centauri b" in terms of probability. It's possible, we can't prove otherwise (at least not now), but we have no good reason for thinking so. From the article you linked:
The criteria we use for judging theories are how good they are at accounting for the data, not how pretty or seductive or intuitive they are.
It's my conviction that so many religious claims tales are constructed specifically to thwart attempts at finding the truth about em. It's a common ploy used by tricksters, preachers, and politicians throughout history.

Then we have the seeming, orreal need for folks to make sense of the unknowable, and these tales gain power simply because they offer hope, if only an unprovable and unfalsifiable hope.
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