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Originally Posted by rsl12
And I still maintain that supernatural claims can be subject to testing. If Uri Gellar does not manage to bend a spoon in controlled conditions, he may convince himself that it was because there was something wrong with the energy in the room, but the rational-minded folks observing the test may conclude very differently.
What makes a claim untestable stems from other issues: lack of reproducibility, lack of observable and unique repercussions, etc.
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Your position seems to imply then that anyone who believes in God is irrational. That's because there have been countless opportunities for God to reveal his supernatural power in experiments, but it has not happened.
The alternative point of view (mine) is that all these people are indeed rational, and that god/religion is a completely separate realm from science/empiricism, and the two do not affect each other.
On testability, I agree: in order for reproducibility to be possible there has to be theoretical predictions that are borne out by observation. There is no "theory of the supernatural" by definition, therefore there are no predictions, therefore no reproducibility. As soon as there is a "theory of the supernatural" with testable predictions, it is ipso facto no longer supernatural, but part of the natural world.