(October 15, 2014 at 1:57 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(October 15, 2014 at 1:19 pm)genkaus Wrote: That's the problem with religion, isn't it? The question of who are the known experts and how do you know it? In other fields when experts disagree, we have real world experiments and tests to help determine who is right - what is the test in religion?
Do you consider any of the humanities knowledge? Not all forms of knowledge can be isolated under controlled conditions. Only the narrow-minded would make experimental verification a requirement of knowledge.
Maybe it just depends on what sort of knowledge it is we think we've found. When you read a novel in which you think you realize something true about the human condition, that's more a kind of self-knowledge than it is the interpersonal knowledge science is known for. If the 'knowledge' is the sort the humanities is famous for, then it will always be the kind over which people can reasonably disagree. We may think their stance indicative of an impoverished state of self. They may think the same of us.
The truths of the humanities are elective and persuasive, if at all, only in a rhetorical way. We may feel that others should be swayed, as we ourselves are, by some insight or other. But we can't reasonably be surprised when others are not moved.
I don't see any reason to mix these kinds of knowledge. It can only cause confusion.
