Q&A: The Type of Claim for God’s Existence
The Type of Claim for God’s Existence
Question
Hello
In many places I’ve seen you say that the claim that God exists is a factual claim, but would you agree that it is also a claim that cannot be falsified? After all, for something to be considered a fact, it should also be able to withstand a falsification test, which would further establish that the claim is true.
Answer
In those places where I write/say that this is a factual claim, I usually add that it is not scientific. There is no connection whatsoever between the question of whether some claim is a fact and the question of whether it can be measured or falsified. A factual claim is a claim that asserts something about a fact in the world. That’s all. If it can be put to a falsification test, then it is scientific, and if not—then not. For example, the claim that there are 50 billion ants in the world is a factual claim even though there is no way at all to put it to a falsification test.
Discussion on Answer
All of this is irrelevant. I explained why.
But in my opinion this is a bit different, because from a quick check I understood that there are rough estimates of how many ants there are in the world, and they also apparently show the methods for calculating such a quantity, and anyone who wants to criticize the number or the way they arrived at it can do so.
In the case of God, the question is extremely basic and fundamental, because it is a question about His very existence in the first place. This is something that cannot be grasped at all, and there is not even any scale or clear framework for what or who this is. Maybe it’s impossible to give an exact number for ants, but any reasonable person understands that there is some range within which one can argue.
The claim that God exists is indeed not scientific; by definition God is something supernatural, so it doesn’t make sense to expect a scientific falsification test. But it is still a philosophical concept, and even on the philosophical level there is no falsification test of any kind either, right?