Do you know that homeopathy doesn't work, or do you just lack belief that it does?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I know airplanes work and homepathetic doesn't for the same reason, science.

[Mister Agenda]

Homeopathy is falsifiable. And has been falsified.

[brewer]

We tested a god prayers group against a placebo prayers group. The placebo group got a better response with P<0.001.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Homeopathy is falsifiable. And has been falsified.

Homeopathy can be falsified because it can be defined.

[zebo-the-fat]

If you forget to take your homeopathic medicine do you get an overdose??

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I can see no possible way that it could work. Show me two samples of water, one plain water and one with a homeopathic dose so diluted as to be un measurable and show a way to reliably detect the homeopathic water.

We can't reliably detect any type of god nor can think of any way that we could possibly go about this, yet people still say that they just lack belief in the existence of a god but are otherwise open to the possibility. Are you open to the possibility that homeopathy works?

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Only if I see some repeatable evidence, this applies to homeopathy and to gods

[Minimalist]

I think the horseshit factor is high with it.

[downbeatplumb]

Before answering, bear in mind that there is no physical mechanism known, or proposed, for water to have memory. Nor what this would actually mean. If water did have memory then the tap water that we drink would have conflicting and interacting memories from being recycled through the sewer system. Also that homeopathic pills do not have a single molecule of the original substance left in it. Add to that absolutely no evidence that it provides any benefit.

Things to consider:

Why homeopathy is nonsense
Homeopathic uranium 200X and similarly bizarre stories

So a question to sceptics of homeopathy.

Do you know that it doesn't work, or are you just not convinced by claims from practitioners of homeopathy that it is effective?

And if you say that you know that it doesn't work because it violates everything we know about the laws of physics and chemistry and relies upon ambiguous definitions (e.g. water memory), then why can't we same thing about the existence of a god?

At what point can we say for sure that we know that something does not exist or does not work?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I think the horseshit factor is high with it.

His water could be contaminated by natural sources of pollutants. His air could have high amounts of sulphur dioxide or nasty gases from a volcanic vent.  And he'll eat what isn't fast enough to get away. 

And lots of people would have been dead by 35 if medicine wasn't available. Black Death wasn't age specific. 

That's the nit load for today.

[ignoramus]

[Angrboda]

"Homeopathy works" is a falsifiable hypothesis. "God exists" is not.

You can demonstrate that homeopathy does not work. There is a mountain of evidence that allows us to be certain of this.

Not so with God. So we atheists are going to have to be content with "pretty damn sure" because no amount of evidence will provide complete certainty in the matter.

It does work though. It provides a measurable benefit over no treatment at all.

Of course you and I know it's because of the placebo effect, not because of magic memory water, but many believers would just say the placebo effect is BS, and clearly homeopathy works.

It matters how it is determined that it provides a reasonable benefit. In cases where no putative mechanism for an effect is known, it is perfectly legitimate to demand a higher level of significance in the outcome. Most of these studies already take the placebo effect into account by comparing results to that of a control group. Between those two factors, it becomes clear that homeopathic remedies have not been shown to provide a measurable benefit over any other ineffective remedy. Whether it provides any measurable benefit over no treatment at all depends both on the nature of the problem and its ordinary course of resolution, and how you define benefit. Regardless, in neither case is the null hypothesis supported by the failure to overturn it. Thus we can conclude that homeopathy has not been shown to work, but we cannot conclude that it has been shown that it doesn't work.

So, I think ultimately one can justify a conclusion that homeopathy doesn't work. That doesn't mean we can have absolute certainty that it doesn't work. That's a question about the nature of knowledge as well as about the meaning of scientific theories. As Popper's criterion of falsifiability makes clear, science is not about proving a theory correct, but rather about surviving attempts at falsification. Since such tests don't positively affirm the successful theory, the knowledge gained is in a sense a negative picture. It's more a discarding what doesn't work than it is a choosing that which does. The current dominant theory is simply the last man standing in the battle among theories. And that fact can change at any time.