Friday, August 24, 2007
Delusion XII - Testing, Testing...
(Bible citation required) Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the bible will know that there are explicit explanations in there that God will not allow himself to be tested. This my Axiomatic point of difference (b). Thus, experiments like the double-blind prayer test are meaningless to prove anything about a God as defined by reference to the bible. I also see this as a potential catch-all copout, in a skeptical sense, but I don't see how proving a testable God says anything about a non-testable one.
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Thus, experiments like the double-blind prayer test are meaningless to prove anything about a God as defined by reference to the bible.
Really? I find it one of the most fascinating experiments he talks about. It's also why I'm eager to hear more of dr clam's idea of God.
It's a very big difference to religion if God is interventionist or not. Certainly the major religions make claims about God's interest in the natural world, and humanity in particular.
But if you would then further claim (and I think you are with 'God will not allow himself to be tested') that such experiments can't show God to be not interventionist because even his actions are beyond measurement, then we'll really have to agree to disagree. We may not be able to measure God, but we can measure changes in the natural world.
If miracles are ephemeral and prayers are continually and consistently shown to be noneffective then those observations demand conclusions.
I wonder if this link will work?
The last bit which is unfortunately cut off in the Google books preview, but is in my copy which I have lost, suggests that prayer probably is effective, but that there are perfectly naturalistic explanations for this efficacy. At which point I would like to put in another plug for Spinoza's Proposition 1.18! ;)
ie. God(Nature)'s actions in regards to humans, will have natural proximate causes.
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