Falsifiability Not An Adequate Test

For whatever reason, the idea that if something is not falsifiable then it is not worth discussing is prevalent among many non-believers. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure what falsifiability even means honestly (but from what I've heard it is rooted in the thought of Karl Popper, and I haven't read any of his works).

Christopher Hitchens in his debate with William Lane Craig seemed to take this line. He said it didn't matter to him to refute his arguments because they were unfalsifiable, and a test of a good argument was that it is falsifiable, not that it is unfalsifiable.


If falsifiability means that there is no principled way to disprove something and is therefore futile to discuss, then what do we make of self evident claims? or properly basic beliefs?

It also seems to be self refuting. If everything must be in principle falsifiable in order for it to have any meaning, then I wonder if falsifiability is falsifiable. I don't see how it could be.

This issue of falsifiability comes up in many debates concerning the existence of God. It seems akin to the slogan "you can't prove a negative". I'm not sure how, but for some reason, my intuition just jumps there (is intuition a reasonable source, and if so, is it falsifiable?). For example, the Kalam cosmological argument was dismissed by an atheist i was dialoguing with because it proved deism, and he asserted that deism is not falsifiable.

It is difficult to see what the relevance of that objection. Even if deism is unfalsifiable (and I don't think it is), it has nothing to do with the argument. The premises are falsifiable, and therefore, the conclusion can be avoided and the positive case for a creator can, in principle, be halted.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milo

Image
So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe...
Read more

What Does The Bible Say About Birth Control?

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.
Read more

Is Canon 28 Binding?

In my previous post , I discussed Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (you'll find the full text of the canon there). But I should have put an asterisk on the conversation because Canon 28 isn't properly part of the council. You'll remember from an earlier post , that what makes a council ecumenical is ratification from the Roman Pontiff. Canons are part of councils. And naturally, canons also have to be ratified. However, Canon 28 was not ratified by Pope Leo (Roman Pontiff at the time). So Canon 28 isn't part of the council and thus isn't binding.  If you are Orthodox, this may sound too convenient. I've already suggested why Roman Ratification is the correct theory in the previous link. However, I want to add two things. First, even Saints in the East agree with the Roman position, and second, a case can be made for Canon 28 not being problematic for Catholicism.  First, there are the sayings of Pope St. Gelasius (about 490 AD), and Pope St. Gelasius is...
Read more