How can your belief be falsified?

[robocop (actually)]

JS and Mohammed had a lot in common, both wrote their own scripture, both had visions and talked to God. Perhaps you should investigate the religious beliefs of Muslims if child brides strike your fancy.

I do not support it at all, but I understand that in big cities in America almost everyone has had sex after 6th grade. Hopefully not true anymore.

 

[savagewind]

Wow, it must have taken a long time for you to poll everybody? However I have not falsified this notion, clearly because it is unfalsifiable. That doesn't mean of course I believe it has any credence.

It is because everybody knows that mermaids do not exist then naturally, the existence of mermaids has been unfalsified.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

So firstly, there is no belief I won't discard if the evidence demands it. So what I am asking is for people who preach or hold beliefs, how can those beliefs be falsified? If of course they can't then how can you rationally justify disbelieving other unfalsifiable beliefs. Which I assume need only be a rhetorical question?

If a belief cannot be falsified, it can also not be proven. That brings up the question, of course, of why would you hold it as a belief?

 

[Wandering Monk]

Deception, lies, dishonesty - often to get some kind of power (political power, conqubines), to hide illegal activities.

You are one of those who misunderstand the meaning as used in the context of empiricism versus faith.

 

[RestlessSoul]

If a belief cannot be falsified, it can also not be proven. That brings up the question, of course, of why would you hold it as a belief?

No theory can be proven, it can only ever be falsified. It can of course be sustained or supported by observation, but only up until the point at which it is, seemingly inevitably, falsified.

So why believe anything? Perhaps because, like Newtonian physics, it works. Even when it’s wrong.

 

[Brian2]

Why?

Because it was not anywhere else.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

No theory can be proven, it can only ever be falsified. It can of course be sustained or supported by observation, but only up until the point at which it is, seemingly inevitably, falsified.

So why believe anything? Perhaps because, like Newtonian physics, it works. Even when it’s wrong.

Newtonian physics isn't so much wrong, I would say, as incomplete -- at relativistic measures. But getting a space probe to perform the wonders that have helped us learn more about our solar system requires nothing more than Newton's laws.

But your point is correct -- we tend to believe the things that work. Which always makes me wonder why, with the sheer volume of prayers that have been offered up and unanswered, anyone would continue to believe in their efficacy.

 

[Audie]

Belief from the heart without evidence seems to be what paves the way for people to consider and to use evidence based belief.

We start by choosing to believe in things without evidence. Belief and caring are closely related and probably symbiotic. If everything we believe were based upon evidence alone then it would be a cold and violent world, people knowing more than they care about. Thus we'd have an ignorant world like something out of a dystopian sci fi epic such as the dark period in Foundation -- or like modern southern China. This is because humans don't care about much unless we are encouraged to. You cannot fight ignorance with knowledge alone. Therefore evidence based belief is of limited use without belief that is merely a choice.

You must begin with the superstitious creature called a human, and you must do this every time another one is born. These silly creatures barely care about rationality at all, so long as they get their treats. But they can be encouraged to believe in evidence, to believe in social benefit, to believe in trusting and in forgiving. You must believe in fighting against ignorance, but you cannot teach people to fight against ignorance merely by educating. They have to want to believe in truth and knowledge and fellowship and competition and in allowing disagreement. They have to believe in personally applying moral principles, but these are not things you can prove using evidence -- not with finality. So there is a choice to believe in things like good and evil, first. Belief from the heart paves the way for evidence based belief.

" Choosing" to believe?

Might it be you choose to believe I
live in a dystopia?

The cold violent world you envision
seems to me far more one to result from
superstition and irrational choices to believe whatever suits however it clashes with reality, than belief based on evidence.

 

[Sheldon]

I think we're basically in agreement here.

You're also right to point out that my example of "science is useful" doesn't really work. My thinking on it was that humanity managed to get by without it for hundreds of thousands of years, so you could perhaps use that to argue against its usefulness. On reflection though, that would be more of an argument against the necessity of science rather than its usefulness.

The subjective belief that something is immoral or moral is a tricky one, and I didn't want to just resort to semantics that smacked of sophistry. For example it occurred to me that though I believe it is true that torture is immoral, this is only because my subjective morality cares about preventing unnecessary suffering, it need not be objectively true that it is immoral to torture someone, in order to be true that torturing someone causes suffering. Though this of course returns us to the subjective claim or belief that causing unnecessary suffering is something we should avoid as it is bad, and again I suspect we would end up using rational arguments for that, rather than objective evidence per se.

I am still unsure as to whether the notion that causing unnecessary suffering is bad or immoral is falsifiable, and again suspect rational argument rather than objective evidence might be all we could use.

 

[Sheldon]

How would you falsify the evolution theory?

I think you mean species evolution, or perhaps you mean any evolutions at all? If the latter then not observing any changes at all would do it, if the former then: Fossilised remains persistently turning up in the wrong geological strata, DNA being identical in all living things, or entirely different, the fossil record showing no change over time, confirmation that mutations are prevented from accumulating in a population, science confirming that the earth dated to just a few thousand years old or was too young to to validate evolutionary timescales. Though I am neither a biologist or scientists of course.

Here's an article that is salient and a lot more scholarly:

" A sharp distinction is made between the theory that species evolved from common ancestors along specified lines of descent (here called “the theory of common descent”), and the theories intended as causal explanations of evolution (e.g. Lamarck's and Darwin's theory). The theory of common descent permits a large number of predictions of new results that would be improbable without evolution. For instance, (a) phylogenetic trees have been validated now; (b) the observed order in fossils of new species discovered since Darwin's time could be predicted from the theory of common descent; (c) owing to the theory of common descent, the degrees of similarity and difference in newly discovered properties of more or less related species could be predicted. Such observations can be regarded as attempts to falsify the theory of common descent. We conclude that the theory of common descent is an easily-falsifiable & often-tested & still-not-falsified theory, which is the strongest predicate a theory in an empirical science can obtain. Theories intended as causal explanations of evolution can be falsified essentially, and Lamarck's theory has been falsified actually. Several elements of Darwin's theory have been modified or falsified: new versions of a theory of evolution by natural selection are now the leading scientific theories on evolution. We have argued that the theory of common descent and Darwinism are ordinary, falsifiable scientific theories."

LINK

 

[Sheldon]

5 people could spend time with (1) person and each come away with a little different description about that person. Using your methodology, the person that they met with may not exist at all.

No, that seems like you have simply used a reductio ad absurdum fallacy. A better analogy would be to claim that causal personal experience was a reliable indicator of how a person looked, then when using a large enough test group (5 people is too small a sample to be reliable), and they all delivered varyingly different results, we would have to conclude it only as reliable as the results indicated.

You are claiming your method produces a reliable result, yet we know that throughout the world, and human history, it has produced innumerable different results, results furthermore shaped by many other factors like culture, and the era from which the beliefs were and are derived, changing constantly what's more. This does not support it being a reliable method for the result you claimed. It might just as easily indicate an inexplicable propensity in the human psyche for superstition, especially where our knowledge ends and imagination takes over.

 

[Sheldon]

Well take away all the Messengers and the resulting Holy Scriptures, then take away the Messages of the Bab and Baha'u'llah, then I guess if I then belived in God, there would be no actual proof, the promptings of my own mind would be easy falsifiable.

Regards Tony

I don't think that makes the belief falsifiable, you just seem to be imagining a scenario where the belief had never been created by anyone in the first place.

 

[Sheldon]

Are you saying that since God cannot be shown to exist, that your world view is unfalsifiable?

No, I was addressing two different points. One about the definition of atheism, and the other about a claim for knowledge or proof of an extant deity.

Also being unable to falsify something, is not the same as it being unfalsifiable. Something would not be falsified if it were true, this does not mean it is unfalsifiable, only that it has not been falsified. Something is unfalsifiable if there is no way to falsify it, even were it to be false.

 

[Sheldon]

I don't think that errors in the Bible show that the Bible is not true.

Not in it's entirety no, in which case perhaps the claim "the bible is true" should have been a lot more specific. Since we know some of it to be untrue, and at odds with objective or scientific facts.

 

[Sheldon]

I was being facetious, but since God is in evidence universally, and especially to born agains, I cannot falsify something that is true! It's like saying "falsify gravity's pull"!

That something has not been falsified does not necessarily make it unfalsifiable, for example if something were true we would not be able to falsify it, this would not however make unfalsifiable, only unfalsified. Something is only unfalsifiable where there is no conceivable way to falsify it, even if it were in fact false.

 

[Sheldon]

You are so intent on responding to every meagre thought I share, you miss my sarcasm.

I am intent on debate, and so when minded to I do just that, I did miss the sarcasm though, it's not an easy thing to portray or perceive in a chatroom.

Answer--YOU cannot falsify the truth of Jesus Christ.

You'd need to be more specific about what you mean by "truth of Jesus Christ, before I can say whether I think it can be falsified, or even if it is unfalsifiable.

You might as well try to falsify the self-evident fact of existence or gravity itself.

More sarcasm? Firstly gravity is far from self evident, it took the imagination and genius of Newton, and even after that Einstein to understand it, and there is no reason to assume that is all there is to know, quite the opposite in fact. However it is falsifiable, indeed Einstein's theory of relativity did falsify part of Newton's theory.

 

[Sheldon]

For the sake of clarity, define falsification. I think some people misunderstand its meaning.

Well I'll take a stab at it. Something is unfalsifiable if we can conceive of no way to falsify it, even were it in fact false.

If that's too simplistic or ham fisted, <HERE> is an explanation of Karl Popper's principle of falsifiability.

 

[Sheldon]

No evidence of sex that I know of. They could have married to help her get into the celestial kingdom.

I have looked in Wikipedia and found no proof of sex with anyone but Joseph Smiths wife.

But there may have been polygamy not to my knowledge.

"Smith's moves to seduce other men's wives were so brazen and notorious that they led one distraught husband--Orson Pratt--to attempt suicide in Nauvoo on 15 July 1842:
“Thousands of Nauvoo Mormons search[ed] for Orson Pratt after discovering a suicide note. They find him distraught because Smith, according to Pratt's wife, had tried to seduce Pratt's wife Sarah.”
Not only did Smith have a reputation as a ladies' man, he also had a record of defending friends of his who were sleeping around.
According to the “Minutes of the High Council of the Church of Jesus Christ of Nauvoo Illinois” (6 February 1841), Smith directed “the Nauvoo high council not to excommunicate Theodore Turley for 'sleeping with two females,' requiring him only to confess 'that he had acted unwisely, unjustly, imprudently, and unbecoming.'”
Eventually, Smith's sexual excess caught up with him in court. On 23 March 1844, William Law filed suit against Smith for committing adultery with Smith's foster daughter and plural wife:
“William Law file[d] a formal complaint with the Hancock County [Illinois] circuit court charging Smith was living 'in an open state of adultery' with Maria Lawrence, Smith's foster daughter and polygamous wife. Maria Lawrence was a teenaged orphan who was living in the Smith household. In fact, Smith had secretly married both Maria, age 19, and her sister Sarah, age 17, on 11 May 1843 and was serving as executor of their $8,000 estate.
"William Law apparently hoped that disclosing Smith's relationship with the young girls might lead him to abandon polygamy but Smith immediately excommunicated Law, had himself appointed the girls' legal guardian and rejected the charge in front of a church congregation on 26 May 1844, denying that he had more than one wife.”(Joseph Smith, “History of the Church,” vol. 6, p. 403; and Richard S. Van Wagoner, “Mormon Polygamy: A History,” p. 66)"

CITATION

He (Smith) was also a convicted conman and fraudster.

 

[Sheldon]

Also, Mohammed had a 9 year old wife and Hindus recently in history all married young.

That doesn't make it any less pernicious or immoral, or vindicate Smith at all. This just seems like blatant Whataboutism.

 

[Sheldon]

I do not support it at all, but I understand that in big cities in America almost everyone has had sex after 6th grade. Hopefully not true anymore.

The disparity in age is the more significant fact, and most people are not claiming to have had a private tête-à-tête with god, and be his chosen messenger. What should one infer about the claim a deity would choose a known paedophile as its messenger?