Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Yes.

Prove it.

Evidence for human value is no less evident than the fact that math actually works, therefore asking for proof of this is like demanding proof that water is wet. Math has no "purpose" and no "design", it is simply a system which is and has been very useful to the humans who have discovered how to use it. Nobody invented math, only methods by which to make it useful. So maybe it's one of the true gods, or maybe their's another explanation for it, but there is truly no evidence that your god invented math, and there is no evidence that he has anything to do whatsoever with the human value which humans experience and express with each other.

[LadyForCamus]

The addition of "spiritual" to "knowledge" is meaningless in all contexts unless you're talking about knowledge of whisky, brandy, rum, vodka, etc.

LOL, then consider me endowed with spiritual knowledge!!! [emoji483]

[LadyForCamus]

[quote='LadyForCamus' pid='1161127' dateline='1451925048']

For me, something falls out of the knowledge category when you are unable to justify it to anyone but yourself.  Like you said, if something can hold up to a reasonable amount of scrutiny by many others we can be at least more certain (if never 100% certain) that it is true.  The dictionary definition of knowledge includes knowledge by way of personal experience, but not by pure experience alone.  

It is my experience that when I give extra protein to patients with bed sores, they get better.  Though this IS a personal experience, I can also demonstrate it to the rest of the medical team, to the patient, to the patient's family, and I can reproduce those results over and over again.  If I just claimed to have knowledge of how to heal bed sores, by casting an anti-bed sore spell, but none ever actually healed, then I don't actually have any knowledge about how to heal bed sores.  It's not justified.  Even if I really, really, believe that I KNOW, at the end of the day I have no way of demonstrating it.  

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I think the difference between a sceptic and a non-sceptic is the ability to assess one's own beliefs and methods of collecting "evidence" as objectively as possible. In other words, the sceptic is very aware that they are fallible and seeks to minimise errors this can cause.

I consider myself to be a skeptic but I'll admit: one time someone told me that "gullible" was written on the ceiling, and I looked! [emoji12]

[brewer]

Yes.

Is it knowledge? Or should we just believe in it without knowing it to be true?

Not knowledge, belief. True or not is up to you.

[Mystic]

Is it knowledge? Or should we just believe in it without knowing it to be true?

Not knowledge, belief. True or not is up to you.

I am also allowed to believe it's knowledge if I believe it to be true? ie. That I have knowledge that there such thing as human worth or human value.

[Neo-Scholastic]

… I do lean towards mathematics being a fundamental property of nature as opposed to simply being a human construct…Where I take umbrage, however, is when the supernatural is applied to math. There's no need to apply magical explanations to something when nature appears to be perfectly capable of being responsible.

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.

The position of OP is that knowledge is either scientific OR spiritual. Now anyone can see that ancient civilizations had knowledge of mathematics even without the benefit of the scientific method. According the OP’s way of classifying things the mathematical truths know from antiquity are ‘spiritual’. In the West defining knowledge as “Justified True Belief” goes back at least as far back in time as Plato. Modern science, as a means of acquiring knowledge, is only about 500 years old. 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.

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.

Like you I am not an expert. At the same time someone doesn’t need to know every detail of a subject in great detail to know something. Subjective facts depend on the perceptions and judgments of a knowing subject. The validity of objective facts do not.

The value of pi, is what it is, regardless of what anyone thinks about it. Now some will say that things like values and equations are descriptive and not prescriptive. We can say the same about the laws of nature. And that is true as far as it goes. But the question remains: to what do these descriptions refer? The laws of nature do not prescribe how natural objects will behave but there is a tacit understanding that such laws adequately represent the nature of real physical objects. Likewise the mathematical truths do not prescribe the value of pi; but rather, describe the nature of real non-physical objects, i.e. circles. I see no magic in any of this.

[brewer]

Not knowledge, belief. True or not is up to you.

I am also allowed to believe it's knowledge if I believe it to be true? ie. That I have knowledge that there such thing as human worth or human value.

Yes. You can have a knowledgeable belief. No one is trying to stop you.

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Not knowledge, belief. True or not is up to you.

I am also allowed to believe it's knowledge if I believe it to be true? ie. That I have knowledge that there such thing as human worth or human value.

Well if that's a fact then you are also allowed to claim that your piss is spring water, when that's what you believe. Actually, the likelihood of that being not bullshit is surely the greater.

[Mystic]

I am also allowed to believe it's knowledge if I believe it to be true? ie. That I have knowledge that there such thing as human worth or human value.

Yes. You can have a knowledgeable belief. No one is trying to stop you.

Do I have to prove I have this knowledge via scientific method or evidence or philosophical arguments to claim it?

If not, then the next questions:

Why treat the belief of God differently? Is it simply because you don't have it or don't believe it's the similar with that respect?

Even if so, if believers believe they have that and that it is similar or even a greater type knowledge, why keep emphasizing on proving it via scientific method or evidence or proofs like the OP is doing?

[Brian37]

Not knowledge, belief. True or not is up to you.

I am also allowed to believe it's knowledge if I believe it to be true? ie. That I have knowledge that there such thing as human worth or human value.

What makes you think because atheists don't believe in a god we don't value life? We do, it is possible to value life without thinking there is a a fictional afterlife. There is no pre life for you either. You go to a movie knowing it will end, but you still go. You go to a music concert knowing it will end but you still go. You go to a sporting event knowing it will end but you still go. 

Humans have rights yes, but claims as ideas do not deserve blind value outside the right to make the claim. Others have the right to challenge the claim and even call it bullshit.