Question about "faith"

[possibletarian]

To approach God scientifically you need to start with God first, and then attempt to falsify it. You cannot start from zero and attempt to prove your way up to God.

You need to have a reason to propose God first ! Then you need to provide reasons why you think your description of god is valid, with evidence Otherwise what's to stop people proposing any unfalsifiable proposition ?

[John 6IX Breezy]

A hypothesis is not mere conjecture, it is a proposed explanation for available evidence, and that explanation has to be falsifiable. Guess what ghosts aren't.

No, that is what theories are, they explain the available evidence. Hypothesis are predictions about the outcome of an experiment. Conjecture aligns more with the nature of theories.

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You could start from zero and "prove your way up". Sounds like an issue of competence, not possibility, to me.

"The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity [...] But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd." -Karl Popper.

Starting from zero and proving your way up is perhaps possible under some other method, just not the scientific one.

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Otherwise what's to stop people proposing any unfalsifiable proposition ?

People are stopped from doing so precisely because your conjecture must be refutable if it is to be scientific.

[GUBU]

Clarify. How do we do science then?

Falsification.

Yes, and that is why we can validly dismiss things for which we have no evidence under the scientitlfic method, like phlogiston, cosmic teapots or god.

[possibletarian]

People are stopped from doing so precisely because your conjecture must be refutable if it is to be scientific.

Exactly like your god then, you need to provide more than a assertion that he exists. In other words you can give as many reasons as you wish for a reason to believe, unfortunately reasons that cannot be falsified can neither be accepted as proof. Also there has to be something solid to refute, some convincing evidence perhaps or proof, none of which you have provided.

I think you mean falsifiable ?  There are many things that are irrefutable, my guess is a supreme being that actually wants us to know him, would certainly be irrefutable.

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"The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity [...] But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd." -Karl Popper.

But it must hit the ground with reality at some point, a theory without any means to test or observe remains a theory.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I think you mean falsifiable ?  There are many things that are irrefutable, my guess is a supreme being that actually wants us to know him, would certainly be irrefutable.

Refutation, falsifiability, testability, they all refer to the same thing in a scientific contact.

[HappySkeptic]

To approach God scientifically you need to start with God first, and then attempt to falsify it. You cannot start from zero and attempt to prove your way up to God.

This is because you would be affirming the consequent in your experimental design: If you hypothesize that "If ghosts exists, then lights will flicker at the cemetery" and you take a light to the cemetery and it flickers, that information is insufficient to conclude ghosts exists because other explanations are possible (dead battery).

But if the light doesn't flicker at the cemetery, we can conclude that ghosts don't exist. For that reason science never aims to prove it aims to disprove.

I understand Popper.  I'm saying that scientists don't assume ghosts in the first place, because there is no definition of what a ghost is, nor a model to describe what its existence would predict.  Maxwell's Demon is a similar arbitrary construct, which illustrates how science should not be done.

The same problem applies to a god.  The premise of a god must clearly define what it is, and what it does.  Only then can an experiment be done to falsify its existence.  Alternate simpler explanations are always preferred if the experiment does not disprove the god.

Please tell me an experiment that could falsify bible-god.  I've thought of many ways over the years based on various Christian claims about God's nature and promises.  They all come up disproving the bible-god.  But, you can always come up with special pleading to make the falsification impossible, leaving the God hypothesis just another unsupportable idea.

A scientist doesn't come up with ghosts, demons, fairies, leprechauns, or other anthropomorphic imaginings to explain nature.  Because its never worked, ever, and is usually defined in a way that can't be falsified.  It is a bad probability bet.

[The Grand Nudger]

"The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity [...] But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd." -Karl Popper.

Starting from zero and proving your way up is perhaps possible under some other method, just not the scientific one.

-and now you want to air your grievances with science, but, like bickering over the reasonableness of your faith - I don't care.

Reasonably, you cannot assume your conclusion.  Since your faith is a reasonable chair sort of thing, logical fallacies are off the table entirely.

[John 6IX Breezy]

A scientist doesn't come up with ghosts, demons, fairies, leprechauns, or other anthropomorphic imaginings to explain nature.  Because its never worked, ever, and is usually defined in a way that can't be falsified.  It is a bad probability bet.

I think it's important to remember that, although ghosts aren't theorized by scientists, there are plenty ghost-like conjectures in science. For example, in the early days of neuron research, Cajal argued for the existence of dendritic spines, even though it was almost universally rejected as an artefact of staining techniques. He stood by his argument, and only with future developments in staining could the opposing artefact conjecture be falsified in support of the dendritic spines.

[HappySkeptic]

I think it's important to remember that, although ghosts aren't theorized by scientists, there are plenty ghost-like conjectures in science. For example, in the early days of neuron research, Cajal argued for the existence of dendritic spines, even though it was almost universally rejected as an artefact of staining techniques. He stood by his argument, and only with future developments in staining could the opposing artefact conjecture be falsified in support of the dendritic spines.

No, dendritic spines aren't similar to ghosts.  The first had tentative evidence for its existence, was postulated and was testable in-principle, and later shown to be the best hypothesis. It also wasn't an extraordinary claim, since it wasn't disallowed by current science.  Are you arguing that because science doesn't know all, and finds new ideas, that somehow that makes it scientific to postulate gods?

The bible-god that most Christians believe in has already been falsified. 

There are some liberal Christians or Deists that have an unfalsifiable idea of God.  Well, that's a nice story for them to believe in but why bother?  If the god doesn't do anything testable, what does it matter if one believes in it or not?  If the answer is "it makes them feel good", I would argue that there are other stories that could be substituted that could make them feel good as well (as the multitude of religions and philosophies have shown)

[Simon Moon]

Just like I do not have to consciously rule out gods as an explanation for the universe, I need justification to rule it in.

That's not how we do science ironically enough, quite the opposite.

Seriously?

Ever hear of the null hypothesis?

"The null hypothesis is a typical statistical theory which suggests that no statistical relationship and significance exists in a set of given single observed variable, between two sets of observed data and measured phenomena."

In other words, there is no relationship between the noise in my house, and a ghost, until a statistical relationship can be shown to exist. Same with gods and the existence of the universe.

So, just how would one go about demonstrating that an unfalsifiable hypothesis (a god is responsible for the existence of the universe, for example), adds anything to the statistical relationship of the existence of the universe, and a god or gods being responsible?

So, given the god hypothesis' unfalsifiability, and inability to demonstrate any statistical connection between the existence of the universe, there is no reason to rule it in as an explanation.

And because of the above reasons, supernatural and god claims are never ruled in as possible explanations as part of science.