[floomp]

> What makes you certain you have identified the process required to be religious? "Required" is a strong word, implying that it is impossible to become religious through any other process than the one you assume.

I was probably ambiguous, but I didn't mean to imply that there was only one process to be religious. Only that the processes to be religious aren't compatible with the processes that one uses to accept science. If you used the same level of scrutiny on religion as you do with evolution or gravity (or luminiferous aether), you'd reject religion.

> Some may begin from premises that are not falsifiable, but it's quite a stretch to say that's required.

Are there any falsifiable assertions that can convince someone to rationally become religious, and which address religion itself rather than the social and mental effects of being religious?

> You don't need to think that even if you're a total Bible-thumper. As long as your Bible-thumping includes an appropriate understanding of history, such that you recognize the creation story as a response to the Egyptian creation account [0], rather than as a response to Darwin.

Assuming said Bible-thumper doesn't interpret the Bible literally, I suppose so. But there's still the problem that they started with a religious belief and were able to mold it to fit evolution in - they didn't apply the same base standards to both ideas. I don't believe that's rationally consistent.

[lotharbot]

> "If you used the same level of scrutiny on religion as you do with evolution or gravity ... you'd reject religion."

I've used the same level of scrutiny on religion as on science -- an extremely evidential approach, I might add -- and yet I have become more religious rather than less. Your idea of the required process(es) is in error. Indeed, you appear to be guilty of exactly the error you accuse the religious of -- you are not applying an appropriate level of scrutiny to your assertion that "the processes to be religious aren't compatible with the processes [of] science". Given your assumption that the Bible would normally be interpreted literally, I submit that you've probably based your conclusion on interactions with a vocal minority which has only been around for about a century [0]. You would do well to expand your horizons to a broader cross-section of the religious community before making such sweeping generalizations about "the processes to be religious".

For reference, my masters degree is in applied mathematics; my masters presentation was a mathematical biology model of adaptive speciation. If you search through my HN comment history (consider using hnsearch.com and looking for terms like "evidence" and "falsifiable" with my username) you'll find I have a pretty firm grasp not just on the conclusions of science, but on the process as well. You'll also find a fair bit of discussion of such topics as the relation of faith to reason, and the role of evidence in religious belief.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism

[floomp]

> I've used the same level of scrutiny on religion as on science -- an extremely evidential approach, I might add -- and yet I have become more religious rather than less.

What evidence did you find to make you more religious? I ask out of genuine curiosity - one or two examples would be great.

> Given your assumption that the Bible would normally be interpreted literally

You've misread. I assumed that a Bible thumper would interpret the Bible literally (since you were using it as an example of a logical extreme). Perhaps I am in error in that case. But, no, I don't assume that the Bible is interpreted literally normally.

> You would do well to expand your horizons to a broader cross-section of the religious community before making such sweeping generalizations about "the processes to be religious".

I admit that is a generalization but I'm not sure if it's sweeping. You say that it's possible to use evidence to support religion, but I hold that this can only happen if someone erroneously interprets the evidence, as humans (all humans, religious or not) have a tendency to do. That's why we have the scientific method to keep our ideas in check. Religion bypasses the scientific method and it's not an accurate description of the universe because of this reason.

---

I searched for your username and "falsifiable":

The first area of concern is that you seem to believe that god can communicate with people, including you (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2963530). I would be curious to know what mechanism is used to do this, and why you think it's more plausible than your own brain communicating with yourself.

The second concern is this:

> Now, if one person who I trust is His follower says "God told me X", and then X is wrong, the theory would be disproved -- so the theory is falsifiable.

Based on this quote, I severely doubt that you apply the same level of scrutiny to religion as you do to science, as you claim. There are several problems with this statement:

1. How to validate that someone is a "follower" of god.

2. How to validate that the person is telling the truth about what they were told.

3. How to validate that the person received a metaphysical message from god (whatever what means) rather than a hallucination. This is one point where falsifiability breaks down because I'm fairly certain that metaphysical events are unfalsifiable (since we can't analyze them "outside" the universe).

4. Even if these validations were made, I guarantee that most religious people would try to claim that god was just testing their faith, or something similar. People do this all the time when errors in the Bible are pointed out, or if a prayer isn't answered, and so on. In that sense, it still isn't falsifiable.

This is why we don't build our understanding of the world based solely on human intuition. It just isn't accurate because the universe is not a human. It's just reality. It doesn't share any of our assumptions or ideals or desires, and projecting them onto the universe to try to divine some cosmic purpose is a mistake.

I contend that nothing you've brought up is sufficient evidence to justify religion as a correct belief to hold. In fact, I'd argue that the amount of assumptions and intuitions that religion presents as truth is good reason to shed it as it seems to make it very hard to analyze it objectively.

[lotharbot]

> "I hold that [using evidence to support religion] can only happen if someone erroneously interprets the evidence" > "Religion bypasses the scientific method"

Do you have any sort of evidence to support these assertions? Can you explain precisely what it is about religion that makes it necessarily incompatible with the scientific method? You've waved your hands in the direction of falsifiability, but haven't really made a specific argument to that effect (and I don't think you understand the concept of falsifiability very well; more on this below.)

I concede that some people's approach to religion is not evidential. I concede that some people make religious claims which are not falsifiable. But you have erroneously assumed this is a necessity of religion rather than simply the failing of some individuals. You have asserted that "most religious people would try to claim that god was just testing their faith", and perhaps that is true among the religious subgroups you've interacted with, but that's not the approach I see among my subgroups.

-------

> "I would be curious to know what mechanism is used to do this, and why you think it's more plausible than your own brain communicating with yourself."

The mechanism might be described as telepathy: a thought coming into someone's mind which is not their own thought, and which was not communicated through known physical means (such as sound or sight).

I describe a few of these experiences later in the linked thread [0] -- things like hearing turn-by-turn directions to previously unknown locations, or being told to give a particular item to a stranger who had some specific need for that exact item. It is implausible that this is just my own brain, specifically because it's information my brain doesn't have at the time it's communicated.

Verifying someone is a follower of the same God is much like verifying that someone else is really friends with your mother -- they give accurate and specific descriptions which correspond to your own observations, and their behavior shows the appropriate characteristics. Verifying they're telling the truth about these experiences is much like verifying someone is telling the truth about any other experience -- partly it comes down to their credibility on other, verifiable matters (do they lie about what they were doing yesterday?), partly it comes down to the details of their story (do they get tripped up when retelling it? Is the level of detail consistent and appropriate for a true story?), and partly it comes down to the same thing as validates it's not a hallucination: there's some tangible result, such as their having found a specific person at a specific location who needed a specific item. All of the bits of scrutiny you accuse me of not applying, I have applied, and I've found that my position stands fairly strong while the alternate explanations people tend to propose are woefully inadequate [1].

> "What evidence did you find to make you more religious?"

Partly the above experiences, and personality/behavioral changes I've observed in myself and others directly following similar experiences (I regularly ask thoughtful atheists for explanations, with the honest desire for viable alternatives, but they always end up with goofy explanations requiring some combination of telepathic aliens, very honest people lying, and an unreasonable amount of luck.) A lot of it has been examinations of what are supposedly the "best" secular theories about some of the things my wife describes in [2], such as the origins of the New Testament gospels, and finding those explanations not to correspond to the evidence very well while the Christian explanations do [3].

-------

Now, you've made the same mistake about falsifiability that appeared in the other thread [4]. Specifically, you've attempted to apply the criteria of falsifiability to experiences or observations, and complained that supernatural experiences don't qualify. But falsifiability doesn't apply to observations/data, it applies to theories/explanations. Falsifiability means that a theory is constructed such that, if it was false, you can conceive of a particular set of data that would be inconsistent with the theory [5]. "I counted three white swans" is data and therefore has no relation to falsifiability; "all swans are white" is a theory which is falsifiable. Likewise, "I heard a voice that told me to do X" is data; "I recognize the voice of God, who tells me to do things which He's always right about" is a falsifiable theory (if I hear what I think is the voice of God tell me to do something that turns out to be wrong, say, "such-and-such person will be at such-and-such place" and they're not there, this is not consistent with the theory.)

You are correct that I haven't brought up sufficient evidence to justify religion as a correct belief; that's well beyond the scope of a Hacker News post. All I hope to show here is that religion is not necessarily incompatible with the evidential approach that characterizes science, and that some people who take an evidential approach become or remain religious without "compartmentalizing".

[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2971781

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3016150

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2971214

[3] if you're willing to spend some time, watch from about 9:00 to 33:00 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5Ylt1pBMm8 for a fairly intriguing argument about the names, and disambiguators, present in the gospels

[4] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2956963

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

[alinajaf]

> I describe a few of these experiences later in the linked thread [0] -- things like hearing turn-by-turn directions to previously unknown locations, or being told to give a particular item to a stranger who had some specific need for that exact item. It is implausible that this is just my own brain, specifically because it's information my brain doesn't have at the time it's communicated.

You need psychological help.

[lotharbot]

> "You need psychological help."

This is one of those woefully inadequate responses that comes up pretty much every time I talk about this. I've taken the time to research delusions and hallucinations -- how they present, what sort of secondary issues they are correlated with, and so on -- and the explanation simply doesn't fit. Those I know who've had these experiences are otherwise extremely stable and "together", the sort of people others turn to because they've clearly "got it". The only reason to believe there's a psychological issue is these specific stories, only they don't fit the profile -- because they're so consistently and impressively right. Delusions simply aren't that lucky.