Is any religion testable in any way? Does any holy scripture contain even one fact? I have never found anything other than myth, fable, interpolation and contradiction. I have heard it argued a few times that Buddhism is a testable religion. Presumably they mean that buddhists are more content. Studies suggest otherwise. People in some of the least religious countries are happiest such as Scandinavia for instance. Not only that, Buddhism is not really a true religion if it does not worship a god.
I guess some criteria for testing must include a change in demeanour towards a better life, the relinquishing of material wealth (rewards in heaven), altruism based purely on scripture. I was a Catholic once. I think I became a better person when I broke away and started to think for myself what was right and wrong.
I feel sure that Paul Dirac was more or less right when he said:
Okay, so religion helps keeps the peace among the poor, and maybe that's one reason for its invention. But this reminds me that you can't really have a Scientific Study of Religion because religion by its very nature is not testable in the same way that a scientific or economic model is testable.I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.