When I was coming out as a non-believer, I actually wrote a letter to my Bishop outlining some of my concerns, and one part in particular strikes me as an appropriate theme to highlight the differences between science and religious belief. Namely, the notion of falsifiability – being able to conceive of a set of circumstances that would prove a belief or hypothesis to be untrue.
One of the favourite examples for exploring this idea is the “invisible pink unicorn” theory, which is as simple as it sounds. If I were to assert there was an invisible pink unicorn in the room, and leave it up to you to disprove the notion, with a few additions to the theory I could put it beyond your ability to falsify. Of course, you can’t see it because it is invisible. Maybe I forgot to mention that you can walk straight through it without feeling anything either. It doesn’t smell or taste of anything, and only believers can hear its delightful neighing. There is no sensor or machine sensitive enough to detect its existence. I have left you with no means to disprove the existence of the pink unicorn – the theory of its existence is unfalsifiable. But that says nothing about the probability of it being true as it prevents any possible evidence from emerging.
Science holds falsifiability to be a key aspect of any accepted theory. That is, though we may have good evidence that a theory is true, it is also possible to imagine the evidence or test that could come up to prove it wrong. By applying these tests, we can determine that a theory is wrong, or conversely, the tests may show what we would expect if the theory were true. For example, the theory of evolution is a theory supported by a wealth of evidence. However, we can also imagine evidence that would prove evolution wrong – one classic example being finding fossilised rabbits in Precambrian rock. This would mean that highly evolved animals were around long before we thought, and would not have had sufficient time to evolve by the mechanisms proposed by evolution. This is but one example of how evolution can be tested. Every time a test has been performed and turns out to produce evidence to support the theory of evolution rather than to falsify it, the probability of evolution being true increases.
There are many people who claim to have personal evidence that god intervenes in their lives, but in the letter to my old Bishop, I outlined my belief that many people turn an intervening god into an unfalsifiable hypothesis:
“You have bid me to take comfort in the wise words of those who have attempted to tackle the issue of why good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people – in essence the problems of pain and suffering in the world of a loving God. However, I cannot help but view the insights into that topic as the biggest demonstration of how confirmation bias allows us to make miracles out of random, frantic action. If I do good deeds and reap well, God is rewarding me for my efforts – my thanks go to God. If I do good deeds and reap poorly, God is testing me for my own good – my thanks go to God. If I do evil deeds and reap poorly, God is pointing out the error of my ways – my thanks go to God. If I do evil deeds and reap well, God is being merciful despite my sinning – my thanks go to God. It is this ability to preserve belief in the face of all possible events that confounds an admonition to treat God as an experimental hypothesis. If one wishes to believe, the facts that could falsify belief will become secondary to that wish to believe such that belief will be preserved. I do not find such a method to be in keeping with the pursuit of truth”
And I still don’t…
pepsimaxfiend 