[Avodah] Religion and Falsifiability

[David Riceman]

kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> Of course a religion does have an effect on its adherents. But other 
> things affect them too!
>   
I was (unsurprisingly) thinking like a statistician.  Of course you 
can't know whether any particular action of a person is motivated by his 
religion, but you'd expect that some actions of some people are.  
Suppose, then, that group A is religious and group B, otherwise similar, 
is irreligious (yes, I know, it's hard to find these groups).  In the 
aggregate you'd expect more of group A's actions to have religious 
motivation.  If there's really no difference then what has their 
religion accomplished?  And if it really doesn't accomplish anything 
then why bother?

David Riceman