Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge

[Neo-Scholastic]

Please understand that I cannot give you, in just a few posts, a comprehensive summary of everything I think and why I think it. You accused me of being evasive at best, dishonest at worst. You have asked me many questions about me that, to my mind at least, are tangential to the discussion in this thread. My admiration of Swedenborg’s comprehensive exegesis of Genesis, Exodus, and the Apocalypse doesn’t directly affect my thoughts about first principles and fundamental philosophical problems that date back to the pre-Socratics. From your line of questioning about my theological views, I get the sense that you feel my belief in God undermines anything else I may have to say. You may not in actuality be so prejudiced and maybe your questioning represents genuine curiosity. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

My position on your OP, was grounded the moderate realist distinction between the form of a thing and the matter from which it is made. I hoped to address the more general understanding of ‘spiritual’, as the essences of things (which I think can be known), from a speculative type of ‘spiritual’ substance, an epiphenomenal ectoplasm, which may exist but could not be known from observation of nature. One could believe either and still not believe in God. Even if all theists disagree with notion that natural science is the only means by which to attain knowledge, someone doesn’t need to be a theist to do so. Many atheists also oppose scientism. Here is why, in a hopefully more clear way.

The underlying assumption of the scientific disciplines is that reality is intelligible. This is to say, cause-effect relationships happen consistently and things exhibit behaviors according to their natures. Science can discover the nature of particular beings, but science lacks the tools to ask about the nature of being itself. Science can discover the causal relationships between things, but it cannot account for why causality works. Generally people who say that only the finding of natural science qualify as knowledge adopt the following stances: 1) no knowable reason accounts for the consistency of cause-effect relationships & 2) no knowable reason accounts for some particular things having a general nature. To them, these are just brute facts contingent on nothing at all.

This belief cannot be empirically validated using the tools of natural science. One can certainly take a pragmatic approach and say that facts are ultimately about what appears to work and whatever is happening below the surface doesn’t matter. That only allows for a weakly defined meaning of knowledge. In pragmatism, facts stay contingent. Everyone ‘knows’ that crows are black until someone finds a white one. Certainty is impossible. Somehow pragmatism, as ontology, fails to satisfy. Most people believe that the value of pi does not depend on measurements of round objects, but the other way around. The roundness of an object depends on how well in conforms to something certain, the value of pi. This is to say, the value of pi is a non-contingent fact. It counts as certain knowledge without empirical verification. Mathematicians do not perform lab experiments to confirm their discoveries. Mathematics serves as at least one example of non-scientific knowledge attained by deduction. I do not believe it is the only example and believe that philosophy can also be a source of knowledge within its proper domain.