"If something is to be empirical, verification has to be possible"

millions of people have verified it, so it has been verified.

just because some people havent verified it doesnt mean anything, they could lack a quality the people have that verified it, and thus be equivalent to my blind person example...

For a claim to be empirical, it needs to be tested from sense experience. It can not be verified, which is too strong of a word, but it can be confirmed.

Religion is authoritative, which means that truth is provided by special persons and/or a text.

exactly my point. we haven't found any empirical evidence of god (YET). --> Someday we might .. we might never find it aswell. But untill this day no empirical evidence exists(because it doesn't or because we don't have the means to discover it or ....)

As long as you don't know the procedure to repeat the experiment, it isn't considered to be empirical because you can't investigate(verified/confirmend) what it is that made it happen. Find a procedure that everyone (with the same conditions) can follow , and if you procedure gets the same outcome(given the conditions) you can call it empirical.

*My philosophy theacher also clearly stated a few other things:

-Science doesn't (seem to) have the answer to everything (yet). It can't explain "meaning" . He gave the example of a dead body. To humans it is something sacred it means something more then just being a subject. To science it is a subject, a broken machine or whatever.

- Relegion has made an important impact on mankind. The 7 commandments(wrong spelling probably) are still spread in our society. You shall not kill(=illegal).
Or chastity&sex (used an online translator, i hope it's the right translation)--> this isn't followed as stritcly anymore, it has somewhat "weakend", now it's more like "You don't do it with children".

There are powerfull messages in the bible that we humans consider to be important(and wich science can't explain(yet)), that doesn't mean everything that those select few told you is true.

It does make God very improbable( but still not impossible). And this is one of the reason why people don't believe in god i think.

clearly

I won't deny i might not be explaining it correctly, i might be forgetting something important. That is very possible. Millions of people experiencing something is doesn't mean it is empirical, and the experiment can hardly be considered reliable. They teached 5/6 lessons to try and show what science meant by empirical and why it is important that you have a reliable experiment. Explaining this is hard, understandig it aswell. It is very likely i'm not the guy who can explain it the way it should be explained. So i'm going to stop trying. (I also think your interest in proving me wrong outweigs your interest in understanding what i'm trying to say ... that's just an opinion however)

You say you have empirical evidence of God... by all means share it with the world, If you are right it will be the biggest scientific breakthrough mankind has seen so far. It should be your duty to share this information with mankind. I'm pretty sure that the things you said here will not be considered empirical, and your experiement will be considered everything but reliable. Someone who knows more about the subject will probaly be more able to show you what relaible science(as in a relaible experiment) and empirical means, and why it that cannot be considered empirical.

If you think you have empirical evidence of God you have the biggest scientific breakthrough in the palm of your hands(or mind).

1)They're not synomyms, but they go hand in hand.  You have every right not to believe that statement when i say this, but i'm going to stop trying to explain it to you.

2)I allready said i wasn't gonna try to explain it anymore because i'm probably the not the right guy to do it. By all means share what you think with the world, call the media and tell them you have empirical evidence of God. I guarantee you it will not be considered empirical.

3) [a]"it"= empiricalism?

I brought it up because i think it is one of the reasons why people do not believe in God.(the absense of empirical evidence being the reason why people don't believe in God)

[b]"it"= meaning of empiricalism
I brought this up because you seem to have a different idea of "what is empirical". Again, if you have empirical evidence of God, you hold the biggest scientific breakthrough in the palm of your hand(I'm not joking or trying to mok you, it would really be the biggest breakthrough so far). Someone who is more capable of explaining what i am trying to say will probably be able to make it clear to you that what you said here isn't considered to be empirical, and your verification/confirmation methods are far from reliable.

I suppose you could look at is that way aswell.

According to slides from last year:

empirical statement:
- says something about the facts
- is based on observation/detection/perception.

regular statement:
- often a "personal" opinion, wiht a theoretical background.
- based on the trustworthiness of the speaker.

!!attention!! Whether or not a statement is true or false has no effect on whether or not a statement is empirical. It's about what the statement is based on.

------(next slide)-------
Science is based on empirical knowledge, but...

Science is more then empiricical knowledge.

Science gives  empirical knowledge(information) an interpretation

Information without interpretation is not real knowledge.

----(next slide)---

How to constuct a good reasoning/interpretation?
--> a reasoning is a chain of logically ordered statements.
--> A conclusion can never be an empirical statement

2 methods for a sound reasoning: Induction and deduction(good science uses both)

---(a few slides later)--

Induction: empirical information ---(induction)--> theory. You construct a theory based on empirical detection
deduction: Theory ----(deduction)---> empirical information(verification). You try to verify your theory by attaining empirical information.
........

==>Induction doesn't apply to religion because we don't have the empirical information/perception(yet)
==> Deduction hasn't been been able to be applied to relegious theories yet, because no empirical information/perception (verification) about God has been found so far.

"Because you are told "God" is impractical by science."

This is a blanket statement. There may be some scientists who believe God is "improbable" or "impractical," but this is not necessarily the norm. Science (good science, not junk science) proves things with concrete evidence, as opposed to religion, which bases everything on faith.

My wife is a molecular geneticist, so I know many, many scientists. Most or devout Hindus, Bhuddists or Christians.

i thought Bhuddist were against testing on animals, i could be wrong though.  but i'm certain i heard that somewhere...

@justinian,
do you think there is a 6th sense?  not the stupid one with ghosts and paranormal shit.  but a 6th sense that could explain feelings like de'ja vu, dreams and as some would say "god"

i thinks anything can be 100% reliable**, people and their interpretations aren't.  some say they felt the presence of god or a loved one.  but i think that people want that feeling, so they interpret something that can lean in the direction they want it to.

since, i dont believe in god.  if any of these so-called experiences of god happen to me, i will either ignore it or maybe relate the feeling to something that i want to experience.  if something unexplainable happens, alot of people link it to god, when in fact as a species we dont know shit about the universe.... i'm not saying God is a "cop-out", i'm saying God supports mankind's desire to find stability in this complex universe. maybe a safety net?

** if something was 100% unreliable, the we can be 100% sure that we shouldn't rely on it