More Than 9 in 10 Americans Continue to Believe in God
Out of context: Reply #25
- Started
- Last post
- 64 Responses
- lowimpakt0
In the story of the boat the missionary undertook an experiment to test his theory with empirical methods i.e. building and testing a boat.
He was able to falsify his theory correct through the scientific method. While it would appear to support the theory of the tribe the experiment falsified the theoretical framework utilised by the tribe to describe their theory.
In doing do he/she was able to advance the theory of the tribe by showing them that their analogy of an evil spirit is in fact a real living worm.
On the basis of this testing of the theory through the scientific method the tribe cam become enlightened and stop telling each other stories about evil spirits.
So in summary, what the boat story is suggesting that the theory of god can be wrong for various reasons i.e. ignorance, bounded rationality etc. and that religious people have to use "faith" (or evil spirit stories) as a mechanism to compensate for the cognitive dissonance brought about by the fact that their theory of a god is untestable through empirical methods.