What would you mean by "testable evidence"? examples?

[Kylie]

That light bends is the null hypothesis. When testing a theory the aim is to disprove or invalidate it. That would be the hypothesis. If the result is the null hypothesis then the theory is supported.

Citation for this claim?

When testing a theory, the aim is to use it to make a prediction and then see if that prediction corresponds with reality.

 

[essentialsaltes]

That light bends is the null hypothesis. When testing a theory the aim is to disprove or invalidate it. That would be the hypothesis. If the result is the null hypothesis then the theory is supported.

I don't think that's a standard way of thinking of the null hypothesis.

In inferential statistics, the null hypothesis (often denoted H0)[1] is a default hypothesis that a quantity to be measured is zero (null). Typically, the quantity to be measured is the difference between two situations, for instance to try to determine if there is a positive proof that an effect has occurred or that samples derive from different batches.

What are the two situations? Light not passing near a mass (like a control) and light passing near a mass (the experimental condition). The null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the two situations. I.e. that mass has no effect on light.

 

[ruthiesea]

Citation for this claim?

When testing a theory, the aim is to use it to make a prediction and then see if that prediction corresponds with reality.

You cannot prove a theory. You can only disprove or invalidate it either in whole or in part. If your hypothesis is intended to prove a theory you will be always disappointed. However if you are successful in disproving a prediction you’ve accomplished something. When it was shown that light does bend in the presence of gravity it did not prove the theory. It just supported it.

When it is said that the TOE hasn’t been proven that is correct. However all the data supports it and it has never been invalidated.

 

[Kylie]

You cannot prove a theory. You can only disprove or invalidate it either in whole or in part. If your hypothesis is intended to prove a theory you will be always disappointed. However if you are successful in disproving a prediction you’ve accomplished something. When it was shown that light does bend in the presence of gravity it did not prove the theory. It just supported it.

When it is said that the TOE hasn’t been proven that is correct. However all the data supports it and it has never been invalidated.

I think you misunderstood my question.

You said that testing a theory is only done as an effort to disprove that theory. I said I believed that was untrue, and that the aim of testing a theory is to see if the predictions the theory makes match with what happens in reality. If they match, then it supports the theory. If they do not, then it disproves the theory.

 

[jayem]

An example of this is the Christian claim that Jesus was crucified, burried and that he rose from the dead.
The documentary evidence is that he lived, he was crucified, burried and that his tomb was found to be empty.
Did Jesus rise from the dead?
The disciples cetainly believed so and it dramaticly changed how they behaved.

How do you explain it?

Mark’s gospel, the earliest account of Jesus, wasn’t written till 30 years after Jesus was gone. Plenty of time for the resurrection and all the miraculous events attributed to Jesus to be fabricated in order to make the narrative more compelling. The original purpose of the gospels was to attract converts. Jesus—like the Buddha—left nothing in writing. And there are no known contemporaneous accounts of Jesus’s life.

The fact that people’s lives and behavior have been changed by spiritual belief is not evidence that such belief is uniquely true. A co- worker of mine felt reborn when she discovered Scientology. And she tried to recruit us.

Then there is for you the embarasing problem that the universe and life exists. How do you account for it, when science says that there was a begining of the universe?

Everything that has a begining, has a cause.
The universe has a begining.
What caused it to begin?

Just because we don’t have an explanation now doesn’t mean we never will. Consider the state of knowledge 300 years ago. In 1721, Isaac Newton was still alive. He discovered the mathematical formula to calculate the force of gravity between 2 masses. But did he have a clue that gravity is a distortion by mass of the time-space continuum? Or that mass is acquired by matter interacting with a boson in a Higgs field that permeates the entire universe? None of us can imagine can imagine what we may learn 300 years from now.

Your post is the argument from incredulity. You can’t conceive of how the universe and all it contains could have appeared by natural processes. This is a primitive form of thinking, which humans have always done. We’ve always attributed what we didn’t understand to the actions of gods, spirits, or other supernatural entities. Yet as our knowledge has improved, a supernatural explanation has never been shown valid for anything. So, by simple inductive reasoning, why should I believe the Bible God—or any god—is the answer to the many things we still don’t understand?

 

[Astrid]

Mark’s gospel, the earliest account of Jesus, wasn’t written till 30 years after Jesus was gone. Plenty of time for the resurrection and all the miraculous events attributed to Jesus to be fabricated in order to make the narrative more compelling. The original purpose of the gospels was to attract converts. Jesus—like the Buddha—left nothing in writing. And there are no known contemporaneous accounts of Jesus’s life.

The fact that people’s lives and behavior have been changed by spiritual belief is not evidence that such belief is uniquely true. A co- worker of mine felt reborn when she discovered Scientology. And she tried to recruit us.



Just because we don’t have an explanation now doesn’t mean we never will. Consider the state of knowledge 300 years ago. In 1721, Isaac Newton was still alive. He discovered the mathematical formula to calculate the force of gravity between 2 masses. But did he have a clue that gravity is a distortion by mass of the time-space continuum? Or that mass is acquired by matter interacting with a boson in a Higgs field that permeates the entire universe? None of us can imagine can imagine what we may learn 300 years from now.

Your post is the argument from incredulity. You can’t conceive of how the universe and all it contains could have appeared by natural processes. This is a primitive form of thinking, which humans have always done. We’ve always attributed what we didn’t understand to the actions of gods, spirits, or other supernatural entities. Yet as our knowledge has improved, a supernatural explanation has never been shown valid for anything. So, by simple inductive reasoning, why should I believe the Bible God—or any god—is the answer to the many things we still don’t understand?

"Everything has a beginning" has some probs.
It assumes an understanding of time that is
a great concept for anyone to have.
Another is the special exception for the
Uncaused causing- thing.
If people want to involve cause and effect
they need to acknowledge that both
"First cause", and prophecy both violate
the claimed cause and effect relationship.