[Avodah] Religion and Falsifiability

[Rich, Joel]

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
==============================================
Because maybe the A's were by nature worse and so their current
equivalence to B's results is a great difference from where they would
have been without religion!
KT
Joel Rich
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