Your examples are attributes of existing things. Those can be discovered by science.
"flat earth" is a thing. It is not an attribute of "earth".
We do not know that there is not a flat planet somewhere - we can infer it through physics, but we cannot be sure that there might be some law or phenomenon that we do not currently know about.
"flat planet" is a different theory and a different thing. And, because you have made the entity so general, no, we can't falsify it. So it remains as a possibility.
You can, however, prove that our earth is not flat or that the solar system does not revolve around it. ..Falsification is disproving a specific testable claim.
Thank you for showing that these "things" can be disproven. You just proved my point. Many "specific testable claims" involve "things". Well, actually, every "specific testable claim" is a thing. Being a "claim" makes it a thing: a claim.
You cannot prove that fairies don't exist in some other parallel dimension and they are able to pop into our dimension at will.
Ah! Now you are changing the theory. The original theory of fairies did not have them in some parallel dimension. The statements of fairies put them squarely in our universe.
What you are doing is adding "ad hoc hypothesis" because the "something" -- fairies --
has been disproven. You can do this for
any and every theory. You can keep adding ad hoc hypotheses until you make the "something" unfalsifiable.
BUT, it's not a valid tactic. In order for ad hoc hypotheses to be valid, they must be testable
independently of the theory (something) they are trying to save. So, is "parallel dimension" testable by any means that does not involve a hiding place for fairies? No.
You cannot disprove something that has infinite possibilities in how it can be claimed to be true.
But that wasn't your original claim. You claimed you couldn't prove
anything false. Now you have a subset that can't be proved false.
However, deity doesn't have an "infinite possibilities in how it can be claimed to be true". And certainly Yahweh (the Judeo-Christian deity) has limited possibilities. So even here deity could be disproved
if we could get the evidence to do so. The problem is that science can't get the evidence. Either the evidence isn't there or science is incapable of getting the evidence.
You see? You're only falsifying fairies by limiting the scope of the claims about them.
No, I'm saying that those "things" already have limitations on the scope. That's how they were stated originally. You can avoid falsification --when the evidence shows up -- by changing the claim. Now you have to decide whether that is a valid thing to do.
Maybe they just left the material plane and entered some heaven that is yet undetectable by us.
1. Again, you are making ad hoc hypotheses.
2. You didn't consider
how theists decided those deities were falsified. Basically, in each case statements were made about what the deities did: Zeus and Thor made lightning, Marduk made plants grow, Osiris also made plants grow and oversaw the Underworld. What happened is that different causes were found for what those deities did. Also, remember Zeus was said to live in material houses on Mt. Olympus. Climb that mountain and there are no houses. (Of course, you can now add the ad hoc hypothesis that the houses are invisible and immaterial.
)
Evidence is anything that lends support of an idea.
That's what you think "evidence" is? But what would that be? What eventually is "anything"? Shoot, by your definition a lie would be evidence. It is "anything" and it can lend support to an idea.
What about something that contradicts an idea? Is that evidence? By your logic, anything that contradicted the idea that a person is guilty could not be entered into evidence in a court of law. After all, the idea being judged is whether the person is guilty. So anything showing differently would not be "evidence". I know, I know, you are going to say there is the idea that the person is innocent. But that isn't the idea in a court of law.
When you get down to basics: evidence is personal experience. David Hume first showed this and no one has contradicted that. Personal experience is what we see, hear, touch, smell, taste, or feel emotionally.
So, let's look at your "evidence". and see if we really think those "support an idea"
The fact that Christianity grew and thrived despite early persecution and execution?
Nazism also grew and thrived despite early persecution and execution. So did Marxism. Does that make either one of those true?
What you need to do is look deeper and ask
why Christianity grew and thrived during the days of persecution. Because the personal experience of Christians -- experience of God and the Holy Spirit -- made them think it was true. The adherence of early Christians to Christianity is a
result of evidence, not evidence itself. That adherence is evidence that they thought their personal experiences were genuine. If not, early Christians would have given up their beliefs when things got bad, just like most Nazis gave up their beliefs during and after WWII.
The fact that the text of the bible works in the modern world in a way that no other ancient book does?
You mean the writings of Buddha do not work in the modern world? That's a surprise, considering that Buddhism is a very large religion. I would even say that the writings of the Stoics work in the modern world just as well as the Bible. So there goes your claim "no other ancient book".
All the surviving religions have gone thru and survived (that's why they are surviving) rigorous testing. What you need to do is look deeper. The essential question is: why would people either 1) believe in Yahweh or 2) believe that Jesus was Resurrected.
The answer is in personal experience. Judeo-Christianity is a historical religion, and history is the personal experiences of people in the past. We believe that the Exodus was an historical event. We believe Jesus' resurrection was an historical event. We believe those people who had personal experience of those events reported them accurately.
Then, of course, there are the millions of people thru the centuries who report having personal experience of deity. If you have such experience, then that is all the evidence you need. After all, that's all any of us use in deciding anything: personal experience. Science simply works with a subset of personal experience where the personal experience is the same for
everyone under approximately the same circumstances. So the experience of Darwin looking at variation in populations is also our experience (if we did the same thing). My experience of looking at bone regeneration when MASCs are present is your experience (if you did the same thing).
The personal experience of atheists is different. They have
no experience of God. That's their experience. From that they conclude that God does not exist. However, there are several other hypotheses that will also explain their lack of experience if God exists. So their conclusion is a matter of choice -- faith.