How to show that "God loves me" is false

In the ongoing discussion on the rationality, justification and knowledge status of Christian belief, one of my readers (gaga) claimed that Christian belief is subpar when compared to sense perception beliefs because the latter are falsifiable while the former are not. If you believe God loves you, there's no way to prove that wrong.

Gaga then repeated a claim oft heard from skeptics of faith: "you can't prove a negative." This is an important claim because it aims to remove the evidential burden from the shoulders of the skeptic to show Christianity is false (or likely false) by claiming that this cannot be done, as a general rule.

But the claim is false. Though I accept Christian belief as true, particular Christian beliefs are eminently falsifiable. That is, they could in principle be shown to be false. Here I'll briefly demonstrate two ways that Albert's belief that "God loves me" could be shown to be false and two ways Albert could lose any ground to think it true.

As we proceed we need to keep in mind that Albert is a Christian, and thus when he says "God loves me" he believes that "The God who exists eternally as three distinct and equally divine persons" loves him. It is thus this belief in the love of the Christian God that will be examined.

We will demonstrate this belief's liability to falsification by providing two ways to atack the belief that God loves Albert, and then two ways to attack the logically entailed belief that God exists.

God does not love Albert

To begin with, one could provide evidence to show that God does not love Albert in particular. One could do this by demonstrating that God loves certain people, and that those people are identified by a certain characteristic, and that Albert lacks that characteristic. Or, more strongly, one could provide evidence that God does not love anybody. Perhaps, for instance, we could argue that there is such a high distribution of evil in the world that it seems likely that God does not love any of his creatures. Both of these approaches would constitute sweeping rebutting defeaters of Albert's belief (that is, they would show it to be false).

Does God love Albert?

One could also undermine Albert's belief that God loves him by way of an undercutting defeater. This would not show that "God loves me" is false when spoken by Albert. But it would undermine Albert's justification to believe it true. For instance, one could argue that God loves the elect and hates the reprobte, and that there is no way to know whether one is elect or reprobate. Therefore, there is no way to know whether Albert is elect or reprobate. Therefore, there is no way for Albert to know whether God loves him or hates him.

God does not exist

The other main way to falsify "God loves me" is by showing that there is no such being as God. That is, there is no being that fits the essential (Christian) description Albert gives to God (that is, a being who exists eternally as three distinct and equally divine persons). One could falsify this belief in the Christian God's existence by showing that the concept of this God is internally contradictory. For instance, one could show that the doctrine of the Trinity leads to a contradiction. Or one could argue that there is a contradiction between two or more divine attributes. (Even Richard Dawkins attempts this in his own sophmoric way when he discusses a contradiction between omniscience and omnipotence.) Or one could argue that there is a contradiction between one or more attributes and some fact about the world (as the logical problem of evil attempts to do). In any one of these ways, one could show that "God loves me" is false by showing that there is no such person as God.

Does God exist?

Finally, one could remove any reason to think "God loves me" is true by undermining Albert's reason to think there is any such person as God (another undercutting defeater). For instance, one could argue, as did Freud, that belief in God's love is the result of wish-fulfillment, and thus that Albert believes God loves him as a projection of fatherly care upon a cold, hostile universe. This would not mean "God loves me" is necessarily false, but it would remove Albert's reason to think it true.

Conclusion: The Skeptic's Burden

Since "God loves me" can be undermined in at least these four ways, the skeptic cannot dismiss the perception that "God loves me" as subpar to the perception that "I see an apple" based on the unfalsifiablity of the former.

One final word: the skeptic might reply "but you can always redefine God to mean something different and thus belief that God loves you is not ultimately falsifiable."

This is the "invisible gardener" objection, but it fails on two counts. First, while it is true that Albert could possibly redefine "God loves me" under a new description that might remove a putative defeater, that does not change the fact that the belief is eminently falsifiable (or liable to undercutting) under its current Christian meaning. Second, this state is exactly parallel to scientific theories. Any given scientific theory is falsifiable under a current description, but that description can always be altered to accommodate contrary data. So the belief that "God loves me" is in principle as vulnerable to epistemic defeat as beliefs about the natural world.