Why the "There are so many interpretations of the Bible" claim is confused

[robvalue]

Roadrunner: I think you miss the very real difference between science and theology. In science, falsifiable, testable hypotheses are put forward. They are rigorously tested and peer reviewed. It's the job of scientists to try and prove the hypothesis wrong, using evidence. They can categorically prove it wrong, because it is falsifiable. That means it contains very clear failure conditions. In most cases, the failure conditions represent almost the whole scope of where the evidence may point; the prediction is that the evidence will be exactly where it is said to be, out of all that available space. Anyone can disprove a scientific theory, as long as they understand it, and provide sufficient evidence. Only once a hypothesis has continued to be accurate in the face of all this testing is it promoted to being a theory. It then becomes the approved best model we currently have, until such time as a flaw is found in it.

With theology, the hypotheses about reality are never falsifiable or testable. They can never be proved wrong. There is no way for anyone to try them out, no matter how skilled or determined someone is. They can never be proved right either. They are impossible to assess. So there is no way for them ever to be promoted to anything other than a hypothesis and they remain speculation. There is no way to demonstrate anyone's hypothesis is any more or less valid than any others.

The reason theology is so careful as to keep all their hypotheses unfalsifiable is because as soon as they put their money where their mouth is and make a non-trivial testable claim, guess what happens? It's proved wrong almost immediately. The whole field of "study" is one massive argument from ignorance. It tells us nothing useful about reality, it makes no predictions, and it furthers no knowledge.

Scientific theory, on the whole, converges. This is because it deals with real, testable things that are not subject to opinion. Religious hypotheses vary wildly. They diverge in any number of directions. Not even people of the same sect of the same religion can agree. And for someone who doesn't simply accept some book or other as magically true, which is ridiculous, there is no evidence to assess. It all amounts to creating unnecessary extra assumptions about reality.