The consensus comes from the repeatability of the observation, allowing for differences in position, perspective and time, and the general uniformity of results; there is no such general consensus of religious belief.
It remains a fact that all scientific evidence is derived from, and is the consensus of, subjective experience - which is intangible and unobservable by the senses.
Scientific theory predicts that certain observations will be made, consistent with the theory being an accurate description of reality. Religious belief claims revelation, but cannot point to much in the way of demonstration that this ‘revelation’ is a truth about the world as it is.
Religion is primarily the truth about
what persons are - which has obvious implications for what the world is. It regards persons as more fundamental and potent than particles - just as the power of reason far exceeds that of purposeless processes.
That is an instance of non-Design.
But not the kind of random, chaotic non-design to which you seemed to be referring.
Non-Design necessarily entails fortuitous combinations of molecules and random mutations of genes which are undeniably purposeless events. All non-Design theories point to a pointless existence!
That the fruit of my beliefs is an emotive response to nature does not invalidate the rationality of the means of acquiring said beliefs.
An emotive response to conclusions based on observation and experience is not necessarily rational!
Gandhi’s success in achieving independence for India demonstrates that turning the other cheek is not so absurd and defeatist.
Gandhi had numbers on his side.
Numbers are irrelevant to the moral principle.
What’s more, the concept of nonviolent, passive resistance is not the same as turning the other cheek and simply accepting unjust treatment.
Jesus did not accept unjust treatment for everyone! Nor did He advocate non-violence as a universal principle or expect everyone to submit to injustice.
Taken in its entirety, Christianity is a faith deeply infused with the human notions of kingship, subservience, obedience, restriction and punishment.
The absurdity of that notion is exposed by Christians from the time of Jesus to martyrs of our own time like Martin Luther King, Jerzy Popieluszko and Archbishop Romero…
Evil and love are objective relations between objective individuals, i.e. sentient subjects… unless you reject our objective existence!
The actions resulting from these internal states could be called objective, but the feeling of love and the concept of evil are not identical with the actions they produce. If a dog attacks a child, we don’t consider it evil, because the dog has no concept of malice aforethought (or so we suppose). When another human attacks a child, we do consider it evil, precisely because of the subjective state of the perpetrator.
An evil action is distinct from an evil intention. It is arbitrary to separate the two. Morality concerns the motive, the means and the results. It is not restricted to the mental aspect.
Moreover, according to you there is no “no-matter”. Everything is a manifestation of matter and internal states will ultimately be explained scientifically and interiority will become a thing of the past! Subjectivity will disappear and be seen for what it really is: objectivity!
Pantheism is the belief that all of nature is divine. The fact that I am a metaphysical naturalist in no way undermines this belief - it simply places the origin of nature within nature itself, not outside of it.
How does nature create itself? Is it eternal?
Three simple words dispose of that hypothesis: “ought implies can”. (Kant)
Your scheme of things is a closed system ruled by blind necessity in which freedom, purpose and values are illusions. If only matter exists nothing matters!
Your response implies that you think physical causality entails only one possible state of affairs. This misses the fact that humans (and many other animals) are sufficiently complex collections of matter and energy that the processes of cause and effect are not limited to one possible outcome. They provide a continuous feedback loop between the internal states of an organism (such as a human) and the external conditions in which that organism exists.
Feedback loops do not leave any scope for freedom or responsibility. Physical causality can entail countless possible states of affairs but they all are purposeless.
As I think I mentioned before, it seems extremely odd to claim that you are an entity independent of the physical substance of your brain - one can’t reasonably excuse an action by claiming, “my brain made me do it.”
Precisely! The brain is an inadequate explanation of a person’s decisions…
Your claim also denigrates the value of human emotional responses (which are physical in nature), by claiming that nothing matters if we don’t contain some weird kind of spiritual non-matter that controls our thoughts and actions from someplace within yet strangely beyond our bodies.
The reverse is the case. Human emotional responses are denigrated, debased and devalued when they are **reduced **to physical phenomena - as when love is explained as a product of the sex instinct and persons are considered to be no more than apes…
You must also regard intangible realities like truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love as “some weird kind of spiritual non-matter” - which reduces them to fictions of the imagination which you can ignore at your convenience and allow you to give full rein to your impulses, instincts and desires…
or even that most organizations were started by white people 
)
). Not nearly as truthful and beautiful as Einstein’s work imho.