Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge

[God of Mr. Hanky]

‘Nature’ has different connotations depending, for example, on whether someone is talking about biology or physics or philosophy.

That's what you say. How exactly is that so?

You called your use of it "art" in your last post, but art is subjective, while language is not. Argument is art, but it's constrained by limited parameters by which you can choose your words. "Nature" has its definition according to parameters set when it was coined, and although they may change over time with popular usage, consistency still rules - nobody gets to change a word willy-nilly, as it suits them.

That is the meaning of a ‘term of art’. It’s not as you suppose a specific reference to aesthetics when you said:

I believe that you believe it's art, but when you challenge a scientific idea, art need not apply.

No, that is not what I suppose art is! Art can be any sort of subjective pursuit, which means there are no absolutes to determine whether it works. A visual artist could make sculpture from his dookies and that may work for some people, which would make it good art for them. Argument is the art of playing with verbal dookies. You have the sheer balls to bring art into a field which has no place for it - art can be used any way you like it, but language and science may not. You cannot use "Nature" any way you wish to - I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this, but it's just not allowed!

If you dispute that nature and reality are different, then instead of going apeshit with insults when we disagree you should 1. Not do anything until you've taken another hard look at your position, considering why you believe it's correct and 2. If you still hold the same position after Step 1, then give us a reason why anyone, including the skeptics (not the few special snowflakes who are so enlightened above us because they had an "experience") should believe it too.

Ummm, yeah. I only made one insult in passing. I called Camus Lady stupid after she took disproportionate offense to the previous comments of theists and told them to leave AF. I stand by it. Her getting “all riled up” is her problem. My comments have been quite restrained. There is nothing personal about the idea that some ‘notions’ are inane. Ignorance is simply a lack of knowledge. There is no condensation in telling someone that they are ignorant of certain facts. Everyone is ignorant of something. That’s different from stupid.

Uh-huh, so everyone here other than you is ignorant of something, oh Enlightened One .

Q: What have circles, rectangles, and other mathematical realities ever meant to species other than Homo Sapiens?
A: Nothing - when they come upon or are confronted by an object, a body, or other life form, most species don't need to describe it, therefore they don't need to call it one thing or another

You present a non-sequitor. Only humans have intellect, so of course they can recognize and describe things of which other animals are oblivious.

The point was strictly to point out that math is a reality of nature whether or not some brainy creature assigns its realities names, talks about them, and puts them to its use. Mathematical realities occur in nature, therefore how can reality and nature be separable? I don't think they are.

...it's shape and other mathematical figures which characterize it are strictly human constructs which we created in order to help us sort out the disparate realities which we are capable of perceiving.

Whether mathematical objects are invented human constructs or actually discovered by people is the question at hand. You can assert that they are human constructs but that does not dispel the legitimate challenges to that position, which are several.

if I draw this circle on paper with a pencil, and you say that isn't natural, well you would be making at best a subjective argument.

Actually, that is the opposite of my position. A circle drawn on paper isn’t a truly perfect circle and neither is a cookie or a bicycle wheel. Yet people can rightly say that each instantiates the form of circularity to various degrees of perfection. Circularity is not a truly subjective concept. I say that the idea of circularity is objective because circles are objects that can be identified independently by various observers. If it circularity was only an empirically derived concept known only by abstraction then values like pi would only be approximate. Moreover, I say that the value of pi is the value of pi even when no one is around to know of it. That is why I say that the type of radical empiricism some atheists advocate ignores its own precommitments about what is real.

Alright, so now we're (maybe) getting somewhere.

Yes, true circularity and true spheres are objective. They are also theoretically nonexistent in nature. Nature displays no perfection, and you harp on that fact to support your assertions that it's separate from the reality of perfection which humans can imagine and strive toward. Uh...what reality?

The last time I checked, the value of pi was an approximation, it is theoretically impossible to reach absolute precision with this number. This is because it is a number for perfection, and perfection is a human construct, or a construct for what I suppose is (yes, I said that) a naturally-occurring human ideal? Well, why would it not have arisen naturally in the human brain, thus enabling us to do what other animals cannot through the manipulation of our habitat? Humans can aspire to make the perfect shape through elimination of imperfection, working toward the infinitesimal, correct? Now what is the infinitesimal other than the polar opposite of another fantastical human construct, the infinite? So then, if we say that perfect circles are reality, then we must also allow that the infinite and the infinitesimal are too, but I doubt that, therefore the perfect shape is not reality - we work with shapes in approximations, approximate to the point that they work for us. There is no sign of perfection in the universe, only what is close enough to work for each star as it is, each planet as it is, and each life form as it is.

You suggest that we discovered perfection rather than created the idea, but where in nature (or anywhere, if there is another "where") could we have made such a "discovery"? The very first animal to create a snowball discovered the sphere, but attempting to perfect it would have been its own idea. Moreover, the ability to form ideas is itself a product of nature, therefore non-separability from reality.