I was following you until the last sentence. How does religion 'deliberately' hide itself from the one method we have of verifying that claims are true?
Because the believers make claims that can't be tested by using vague terms and relying on feeling things in the heart. They deliberately keep religion unfalsifiable.
Why wouldn't it need to if the claims were true?
Because if the claims were true, why would they want to keep them from being tested? I would think they would love the chance to show that their religious beliefs actually work.
Back to what you said about gravity while it is on my mind.
You said: "But there could possibly be a single experiment tomorrow that contradicts everything we know about gravity, showing us that our theories about gravity are wrong. We can never prove that something is true, no matter how many experiments we have that support our theories. Because no matter how many experiments we do that support it, it could always be the very next experiment that proves it wrong. But it is easy to prove a theory wrong, because we only need one experiment to show that it's wrong."
So if we an never prove that something is true, no matter how many experiments we have that support our theories, why do you think we can prove that the claims of any religion are true? And if a religion cannot be proven true are you going to discount it?
But the thing is this. We can conduct experiments to test the theory of gravity, and we can gather clear objective evidence that gravity works the way the theory describes. It's not proof, but it is a huge amount of data that can be tested by anyone, and which gives completely consistent results.
Religion doesn't have this. Religion can't be tested in any objective way, the results that one person gets can't be tested by anyone else, and lots of different people who have put religion to their own subjective tests have gotten results that vary widely.
And I already explained that the Bible does not mean that a mountain would literally move because someone said a prayer, so that test is not a valid test.
And I've also explained that that's only because any other claim would leave us with a testable claim that would clearly fail. This is what I was talking about when I said how believers have ways of explaining away anything that doesn't work so as to keep religion unfalsifiable.
How about the claim given by Mark 16:17-18?
17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
These are also testable claims, and they have been held to be literally true by believers. And yet many of those believers have put them to the test and failed. Unfortunately, their failure has meant that they were bitten by deadly snakes and they died.
It is still verification. Scientists verify things to the best of their ability and they are fallible so religious people can also verify things to the best of their ability, although the methods of verification is not the same. Only God and His Manifestations are infallible but fallible humans can still verify things to the best of their ability and a point is reached where we are satisfied with our results.
I don't see how you can claim it is verification when you then turn around and say that the methods are different.
It's like if I had a dream I had a million dollars in my bank account, I could say that I verified it. I don't need to actually CHECK my account balance. I've verified it in my mind, and that's good enough! So I'm a millionaire, regardless!
I don't really want to bring it up again, but scientists verified that the Covid vaccines are safe to the best of their ability so them they were approved and released. However, as you said, "no matter how many experiments we do that support it, it could always be the very next experiment that proves it wrong. But it is easy to prove a theory wrong, because we only need one experiment to show that it's wrong." One year of testing is not enough to verify that the vaccines are completely safe but the vaccines were needed to save lives so they were approved. Under normal circumstances experiments would have been conducted for 6-10 years before the vaccines could be approved and if there had been anywhere near as many adverse reactions and deaths as from the Covid vaccines a vaccine was not approved for use in the past.
Again, we've known about coronaviruses for about a century. Why do you think that vaccines for them have only been worked on for the last year or so? That's like claiming that a new car's airbags aren't safe because they only started designing the car a year ago and concluding that they only started working on the airbag technology then as well.
What do you mean by real world?
What actually exists.
You are a smart guy so I cannot understand why you don't understand that the Bible never intended to mean that praying will move an actual mountain. Didn't you read that article that explains what Jesus meant?
"Faith that can move mountains is not meant to imply a faith that can literally move literal mountains. The point Jesus was making is that even a little bit of faith—faith the size of a tiny mustard seed—can overcome mountainous obstacles in our lives."
Read more:
Can faith really move mountains? | GotQuestions.org
My point is that the only reason people say that is because any other position on what it means would lead to the conclusion that the belief is wrong.
So by those standards, since the Human mind of a scientist is fallible, we cannot be sure that what the verification of the Covid vaccines safety and efficacy by scientists is accurate.
However, as I have pointed out many times already and has been apparently either ignored or forgotten, the scientific method has measures in place to reduce or even eliminate any individuals fallibility by having other people check it (so any biases from one person can be detected and removed) and most importantly,
put to the test.
When it comes to religious beliefs, you have freely admitted that these can't be done.
