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Comment by eks391 | Hacker News Reader

> In one domain, they are skeptical and thorough, but in the other they’ll just take anything at face value without questioning it.

Belief in a God doesn't require that the believer never questions their own faith. It is possible for them to question it, do their own experiment, and determine that there is a God. They could even start as an atheist scientist.

> How do they even know which god was responsible?

Lots of religions have an answer for this. Probably all of them, but I am only familiar with so many. Sounds like you have taken religion "at face value" and could be more "skeptical and thorough" in your research/understanding of them, to quote yourself.

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I’m sure they all have answers for everything, all equally unverifiable and untestable. Conveniently so, perhaps.

If you know of a testable hypothesis for any religion, I’d love to know because I’ve never heard one.

I’m open to being convinced, but I’ve never seen or heard anything convincing for any religion.

You want to conduct the scientific method on the religion, which is good. In preparation for your reply, I read from 6 religious scripts (with internet help) and found that 3 of them encourage this exact approach, ordered by brevity:

John 7:17 (Christianity) Kalama Sutta:10 (Buddhism) Alma 32:28-43 (Mormonism)

The other three I read from (Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Torah) might also encourage this approach, but I didn't find the passage. If you are willing to read the verses around Kalama Sutta 10 paired with the test described in Alma, I think that is a 'complete' set of instructions for starting. This complete picture is in the NT too, but split across several books and not beginner friendly.

Muslims, Christians and Hindus might have some slight disagreements on who or what god is, and on many other things like pork. Generally mathematics and natural sciences doesn't have unresovably different view points between groups.

I’m not particularly interested in what ancient texts say, but with what can be observed.

We are saying the same thing, but you are dismissing me because of the lens I'm using. The passages I chose specifically say to not trust the text alone, but to test the content yourself and observe the outcomes. And one even provides tests to try in case you can't think of any.

You cannot "observe" religion externally, just it's practices, like the eating pork thing your sibling brought up. The practices are the dead portion of the religion, just ways to apply the principles the religion is meant to teach. Just like laws change as culture changes, applications must too, and anyone who views their own religion as just practices probably hasn't read their own ancient text or didn't understand it. Anyway, I have given you what you need to make an observation. You'll have to be a scientist and do a hands on test if you expect to discover anything.

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