Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge

[LadyForCamus]

Now we are getting somewhere. I imagine that with just a little better understanding of definitions, perhaps I can persuade you that maybe, just maybe, what you call my ‘pompous blustering’ may actually point to a somewhat defensible position, one that even an atheist could hold. As I see it, dicohotomies like natural/supernatural and scientific/spiritual serve more as terms of art than precise distinctions. In my preceding posts, I made a clumsy efforts to reveal these ambiguities.

I see, so there's nothing wrong with your idea, and nothing which a better (more spurious, more devious, and more subtly misleading) argument can't fix.

The OP’s author appears to be ignorant of this. I don’t blame anyone from using terms of art. I use them all the time. It is only natural that many errors and misunderstandings follow when the same word can covey multiple meanings. ‘Natural’ is itself one such adjective. Some people think that natural and reality are the same. I do not. Nature refers only to physical objects, their features and attributes. Reality includes both physical and non-physical objects, like circles and triangles. Nor does non-physical necessarily mean magical, depending of course on what you mean by magic.

Can I get some blue cheese, and perhaps a little red wine with that word salad?

I don't think either of us should speak for the OP, and I did skip a few pages, but I know the opening post said nothing of the sort. It's the bullshit of the believer to insist there is a actual knowledge without scientific inquiry, and this is what I saw her complaining of. You need to stop calling it "knowledge", because that is an unjustified claim, and when framed in an intellectual context it's very insulting! The attempts to compare your beliefs to non-sequitors such as math are also BS. Math is a reality which is not itself science, but the developed methods for using it depended on science. Your beliefs are not knowledge because they hide from the light of scientific inquiry and fade away screaming whenever the light shines on them. Yes, scientific inquiry is the only valid path to knowledge, even when you're trying to do math, so get over it!

Modern science, as a means of acquiring knowledge, is only about 500 years old.

So what? In 500 years more of our species, other life forms, the history of our planet and the universe has been learned than the 7000 years of organized religions combined have to show for themselves.

My rudeness reflects my impatience with the inane notion that only empirically verified facts count as knowledge. Mathematical facts, like the value of pi, are certain and perfectly accurate. Empirical facts, like the speed of light, are tentative and approximate (though they may be very very precise). The value of pi is not an average based on measurements of roughly circular objects.

Try looking up that word "inane" - if the definition consists of "irrational", then you should know there is no such thing as any case you can make for your position through any form of rational inquiry. What then is really inane?

This attitude invariably degrades to insults on top of insult, on account of the believer who brings to the discussion his pre-conceived notion that he MUST be correct on what he believes, therefore he cannot play by the rules when he sees they don't favor his side.

Hanky,

THANK. YOU. This Chad fellow gets me all riled up, and you just explained why better than I usually can. Instead of actually laying out his specific world view for all of us to see, he resorts to insults and philosophical history lessons in an attempt to make people feel like the reason they don't believe in god is because they simply aren't educated enough. An insulting position to take, indeed. But he will abandon this thread like he does all the others where someone calls him on his bs. Thanks for trying though! [emoji4]