Atheists, what aspects of "God" can be experimentally tested?

Question

I often hear it said that the existence of God cannot be tested for experimentally.

It's true that it is hypothetically possible for God to have set the laws of physics before the Big Bang and he now only passively watches the universe unfold. This cannot be tested for. However, it is also not the type of God that most people believe in.

Most people believe that God exists, is almighty, and is omniscient. If we assume these things to be true, can we experimentally test any other aspects of his nature? How?

Are there any other assumptions that we would need to make?

Answer 1

Prayer can be tested scientifically; it has been studied in the past, and it never works.

Actually, it makes things worse in some cases.

As for testing his qualities, it becomes apparent that it is contradictory for something to be both omniscient AND omnipotent, because one should ask if God can use his infinite power to do something his infinite knowledge did not know he was going to do. Yes or no, it is clear that one of the qualities will be inferior.

Answer 2

First you need to define exactly what god is.

I have no idea what could be found that you could test. The problem is that it is a moving target to keep science from actually being able to study it.

There have been experiments that attempted to test the effectiveness of prayer since most would say that it helps. Here was the best study on that: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?ex=1301461200&en=4acf338be4900000&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I guess that you could test the predictive powers of prophesy but again: http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm

I am kinda running out of ideas. There are a couple that don't work, in science that would be back to the drawing board. It is the Christians hypothesis. I guess that they are the ones that need to figure it out.

Answer 3

Well 99% of believers in God state that God created the universe. So by studying what caused the creation of the universe (ie what caused the Big Bang), God might be able to be experimentally tested. Anyway our science and technology is not quite at that level, although hopefully one day it will be.

Answer 4

you can't, let's suppose you did some kind of "test' and this came back negative for the existence of god, how can you say with any certainty that the test will always come back negative (you would have to perform an infinite number of tests to be able to say this) or that you are even testing the right things or the result isn't experimental error, you can't test for the absence of things with absolute certainty

it's like the early experiments looking for the neutrino, the first experiments were negative, should they have concluded from the experiment that the neutrino did not exist or should they have tried looking harder? when do you reach the point that you can say with absolute certainty that something does not exist

Answer 5

I can't think of a way that you could do it other than if he were to come down to Earth, say who he was, and perform miracles that could not possibly be explained by anything other than a god.

Of course, his miracles would have to be better than something that could be done by an advanced alien from another planet - say from a species that has had a technological society for a million or more years.

But, I suppose, if he is god then he would know exactly what to do to prove it.

Answer 6

God can't be tested, per se.
My case study is personal, but involves not getting the resolution I needed to issues surrounding the way my body grew.
I asked for the right things, not just to grow right, but to accept myself.
God didn't fix anything.
God does not exist.
Period.

Answer 7

If god is omnipresent (dogma). And god interacts with matter (necessary for miracles). Then he should act like the ether which the Mitchelson-Morley experiment tested. The experiment found no ether and no god effect. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Gee, I guess it is possible to prove there is no god and we already have.

Answer 8

Of course, at one time most people believed the earth was flat also. So much for popular opinion. It's also sort of odd you ask atheists to define the will of "God", when most religious groups can't even agree on it.

Answer 9

It isn't for atheists to define god, it's for those who believe in god.

You need to propose the aspect, then we will figure out whether it is something that can be tested for.

Answer 10

You can't test for something that has never been adequately defined. Before you could try, you'd need to know WHAT is god, and no one seems to be able to agree on that.