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Melburn Thurman asks whether, using my distinction between strong and weak falsification, "would it be proper to say, then, that religion has been weakly falsified, but not strongly falsified?"

The answer, of course, is that it would not be proper. It would be a category mistake. Religion is not a proposition or hypothesis that can be falsified in either sense. One could certainly speak of religious hypotheses, but in order to answer the question one would have to specify them. There's no way to say that religious hypotheses *in general* have been falsified or not. And the question further requires a way to distinguish religious hypotheses from those that are not religious.

: -- Todd Moody, assoc. professor of philosophy, St. Joseph's University (posted 2/11, 2:55 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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