We do get to disagree
Greta Christina puts it well.
Religion is a hypothesis about how the world works, and why it is the way it is. Religion is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, at least in part, because of immaterial beings or forces that act on the material world.
It’s other things too, but the significant bit is this hypothesis of an immaterial world acting on the material one. ‘The hypothesis that there is a supernatural world, and that the natural world is the way it is because of the supernatural one.’
Quite so. And a hypothesis of that kind makes a difference to how people think and act, and it does have to be open to discussion and dispute. It should not must not cannot be walled off from discussion and dispute.
That definition also gives lie to the idea of Non Overlapping Magisteria. There has to be an overlap for theistic beliefs to have any explanatory value.
Quite. NOMA is and always was a really really bad idea. I hated it from the moment that book was published.
I think a “hypothesis” is a proposed explanation of some observed evidence or phenomena. It is a starting point for further investigation. The key here is some observed evidence (facts) or phenomena. Religions fail to offer any observable phenomena or evidence, so a hypothesis is not possible. There is no place to start from.
Is that right? But religion observes phenomena such as our existence, the existence of the world, our feeling of being Special, and so on. The God hypothesis is supposed to explain such phenomena.
I think you have taken the argument back one more step than I was thinking about. Yes, if a person encounters a phenomenon that exceeds one’s knowledge base to explain, than that person might invoke God as a hypothesis.
I misread your restatement of the point: “the significant bit is this hypothesis of an immaterial world acting on the material one,” which led me to think more about the validity of the hypothesis than the source phenomena . I should know better after visiting this site for several months.
I was just drawing on experience of people gesturing vaguely and saying ‘how do you explain all this then?’
:- )
Thanks :)