Why do some people think that Science is the only source of knowledge?

[inocente]

On what basis must I believe what you are saying?

You can decide on the evidence whether he has logical arguments but prefers to make personal attacks, or has no arguments and so can only make personal attacks.

 

[inocente]

Since you not only evade questions but also ignore statements and distort the meaning of the Pope’s words there is no point in attempting to reason with you - as others have discovered.

That is flagrantly and exotically false. Why not just admit that your definition of spirit (post #506) is plain wrong?

All I did was to quote the Pope’s words. Here he is again:

*“We believe in God who is Father, who is Son, who is Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said.

“We believe in persons and when we talk to God we speak with persons” who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like “‘god-spray,’ that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is.”

This faith in the real presence of Jesus is a gift from God himself, the pope said, and when he gives this gift of faith “we must continue on this path,” rejoicing.*

The Pope believes in transubstantiation, in the concrete tangible presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I’m surprised you don’t just admit your definition is fatally flawed, what’s the big deal?

John 1:14 does not read “The Word became some misty, diffused god-spray and made his dwelling place intangible and beyond the scope of science”.

It reads “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

No philosopher could invent Christ out of thin air. Christ must be experienced, faith in Christ is experiential not theoretical, a posteriori not a priori, 1 Cor 1:18-31. And if that most important knowledge comes from evidence then rationalism has nothing important to say, empiricism wins the day.

In short, science rules. :yeah_me:

 

[tonyrey]

That is flagrantly and exotically false. Why not just admit that your definition of spirit (post #506) is plain wrong?

All I did was to quote the Pope’s words. Here he is again:

*“We believe in God who is Father, who is Son, who is Holy Spirit,” Pope Francis said.

“We believe in persons and when we talk to God we speak with persons” who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like “‘god-spray,’ that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is.”

This faith in the real presence of Jesus is a gift from God himself, the pope said, and when he gives this gift of faith “we must continue on this path,” rejoicing.*

The Pope believes in transubstantiation, in the concrete tangible presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I’m surprised you don’t just admit your definition is fatally flawed, what’s the big deal?

John 1:14 does not read “The Word became some misty, diffused god-spray and made his dwelling place intangible and beyond the scope of science”.

It reads “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

No philosopher could invent Christ out of thin air. Christ must be experienced, faith in Christ is experiential not theoretical, a posteriori not a priori, 1 Cor 1:18-31. And if that most important knowledge comes from evidence then rationalism has nothing important to say, empiricism wins the day.

In short, science rules.

Thank you for your opinions.

 

[inocente]

Thank you for your opinions.

And thank you for your opinions.

 

[Mount_Carmel]

inocente - Science is subject to laws, from whence cameth those laws? {If these laws are not from God/the Acaused Instigator, then from where?]

If those laws along with physical and temporal ‘science’ came from God, then they are subject to Him and not the other way around. God can make His own ‘science’ and tweak the laws as He so deigns. God is boss, not ‘science’ - hence ‘miracles’.

 

[inocente]

inocente - Science is subject to laws, from whence cameth those laws? {If these laws are not from God/the Acaused Instigator, then from where?]

If those laws along with physical and temporal ‘science’ came from God, then they are subject to Him and not the other way around. God can make His own ‘science’ and tweak the laws as He so deigns. God is boss, not ‘science’ - hence ‘miracles’.

Of course, agreed. The discussion isn’t about belief or absence of belief in God, but where our knowledge (of Christ and all else) comes from. Some believe that there are forms of knowledge which can be discovered just by sitting in a windowless room and thinking really hard, others deny that is possible and say knowledge must come from experiencing. I’m in the latter camp.

 

[Mount_Carmel]

inocente - Don’t you believe that it is possible for God to visit you with Divine experience/insight/revelation? If you agree that God is ‘the ultimate boss’ over our knowledge and capacity to comprehend, then what is your problem?

Taken from the Penticost account in Acts 2:1-41:

The 12 apostles were gathered together in a house when a terrific wind came from heaven and filled the place. They saw tongues that looked like fire, that separated and came down on each of them.

Immediately the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, who caused them to speak in tongues. The crowds of visitors were astonished because every pilgrim heard the apostles speaking to him or her in their own foreign language! Some accused the apostles of being drunk.

The Apostle Peter stood and addressed them, saying they were not drunk. It was only nine o’clock in the morning. Then, empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter preached boldly to them, explaining about Jesus Christ and God’s plan of salvation.

IMHO, with God most things are possible - including giving enlightenment and knowledge and intellectual powers to those who were/are unsupported with the normally requisite experience.

 

[inocente]

inocente - Don’t you believe that it is possible for God to visit you with Divine experience/insight/revelation? If you agree that God is ‘the ultimate boss’ over our knowledge and capacity to comprehend, then what is your problem?

Taken from the Penticost account in Acts 2:1-41:

The 12 apostles were gathered together in a house when a terrific wind came from heaven and filled the place. They saw tongues that looked like fire, that separated and came down on each of them.

Immediately the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, who caused them to speak in tongues. The crowds of visitors were astonished because every pilgrim heard the apostles speaking to him or her in their own foreign language! Some accused the apostles of being drunk.

The Apostle Peter stood and addressed them, saying they were not drunk. It was only nine o’clock in the morning. Then, empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter preached boldly to them, explaining about Jesus Christ and God’s plan of salvation.

IMHO, with God most things are possible - including giving enlightenment and knowledge and intellectual powers to those who were/are unsupported with the normally requisite experience.

Exactly my point - the apostles didn’t know the Spirit in theory, they experienced the Spirit, just as they knew Christ from experiencing Him, just as you experience Christ in the Eucharist.

You are debating the wrong person, you and I are in full agreement here, it’s others who apparently believe different.

 

[Mount_Carmel]

Exactly my point - the apostles didn’t know the Spirit in theory, they experienced the Spirit, just as they knew Christ from experiencing Him, just as you experience Christ in the Eucharist.

You are debating the wrong person, you and I are in full agreement here, it’s others who apparently believe different.

But the ‘experience’ is also very real in the Eucharist.

John 6:54
Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6:56
He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him.

Luke 22:19
And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me.

As in the general debate you have had with ‘the others’, the argument of transubstantiation stems around whether God could or would confound our earthly senses and whether the Biblical quotes are correct.

You either believe or don’t believe that God would do such things and that the Bible is correct, or you must reject both, since an analysis of the wording links transtubstantiation intimately to Jesus and New Testament accounts. I believe the accounts - do you?

 

[inocente]

As in the general debate you have had with ‘the others’, the argument of transubstantiation stems around whether God could or would confound our earthly senses and whether the Biblical quotes are correct.

Agreed. I’ve no idea what you are trying to argue about unless it’s some off-topic sectarian thing, and I don’t do sectarianism.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Of course, agreed. The discussion isn’t about belief or absence of belief in God, but where our knowledge (of Christ and all else) comes from. Some believe that there are forms of knowledge which can be discovered just by sitting in a windowless room and thinking really hard, others deny that is possible and say knowledge must come from experiencing. I’m in the latter camp.

Does this mean knowledge (of Christ and all else) can only come by leaving the windowless room and going out into the physical world? Perhaps “experiencing” God (in the attenuated sense absent sensory (name removed by moderator)ut, aka mysticism) directly CAN come by sitting in a windowless room where sensory experience is diminished and focus is on God. I see no problem with this unless you want to equate experience with sensory experience (the five senses) which would entail that God is ONLY “experienced” through sensory (name removed by moderator)ut. However, that is simply not what the Church and Doctors of the Church have taught and lived because if God is anything, he is manifestly not identical to the physical world. If you want to identify experiencing God with experiencing the physical world then your equating of “experience” with sensory experience is justified, but that is not the view of the Church.

The other problem with this is the idea that knowledge is simply to be equated with what experience provides (at least you make it sound that trivial.) However, that leaves out the issue of verification of experience and how that verification needs to occur. Individuals experience things all the time, but at least some of those experiences lack veracity. How is that to be known without some means of verification? The question remains, then, “Is the scientific method the only means of verifying experience?” If not why not? If it is, then we have the problem of religious beliefs that are not susceptible to scientific verification.

Your ambiguous use of the word “experience” as a kind of final arbiter for knowledge is fraught with issues to which you seem quite oblivious.

 

[tonyrey]

Socrates pointed that anyone who thinks we should retreat from philosophy must also think soldiers should retreat when it seems likely they will be killed in battle. In other words, only cowards are afraid of the truth…

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Of course, agreed. The discussion isn’t about belief or absence of belief in God, but where our knowledge (of Christ and all else) comes from. Some believe that there are forms of knowledge which can be discovered just by sitting in a windowless room and thinking really hard, others deny that is possible and say knowledge must come from experiencing. I’m in the latter camp.

Glad to see you agreeing with Thomas Aquinas .

Linus2nd

 

[StrawberryJam]

You can decide on the evidence whether he has logical arguments but prefers to make personal attacks, or has no arguments and so can only make personal attacks.

I love you inocente.
I mean that. I have found it very rare for anyone (believer or not) to actually listen and put themselves in another’s shoes even if they don’t fit well

 

[inocente]

I love you inocente.
I mean that. I have found it very rare for anyone (believer or not) to actually listen and put themselves in another’s shoes even if they don’t fit well

 

[inocente]

Glad to see you agreeing with Thomas Aquinas .

Linus2nd

Thanks for pointing that out.

Yes, “nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses”. One of the empiricist good guys.

I’ve not read him, only parts of the Summa. It’s worth quoting a bit to to prove that yet again, philosophers disagree:

“Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes place through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known.” - Summa q. 84 1.

Although after that, particularly in q. 85, his logic about abstraction goes all ye olde worlde archaic for my taste and I lose the plot.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Thanks for pointing that out.

Yes, “nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses”. One of the empiricist good guys.

I’ve not read him, only parts of the Summa. It’s worth quoting a bit to to prove that yet again, philosophers disagree:

“Now it seems that Plato strayed from the truth because, having observed that all knowledge takes place through some kind of similitude, he thought that the form of the thing known must of necessity be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known.” - Summa q. 84 1.

Although after that, particularly in q. 85, his logic about abstraction goes all ye olde worlde archaic for my taste and I lose the plot.

**It is too bad that you did not read further because Aquinas’ point is that the “entire truth” does not come from the senses, but that synthesis and analysis using the intellect can and does form “images” or conceptions (concepts) that are not perceived by the senses, but are derived through the senses from what Aquinas calls “sensitive” knowledge that he distinguishes from “intellectual” knowledge.
**

Reply to Objection 1. Those words of Augustine mean that we must not expect the entire truth from the senses. For the light of the active intellect is needed, through which we achieve the unchangeable truth of changeable things, and discern things themselves from their likeness.

Reply to Objection 2. In this passage Augustine speaks not of intellectual but of imaginary knowledge. And since, according to the opinion of Plato, the imagination has an operation which belongs to the soul only, Augustine, in order to show that corporeal images are impressed on the imagination, not by bodies but by the soul, uses the same argument as Aristotle does in proving that the active intellect must be separate, namely, because "the agent is more noble than the patient." And without doubt, according to the above opinion, in the imagination there must needs be not only a passive but also an active power. But if we hold, according to the opinion of Aristotle, that the action of the imagination, is an action of the “composite,” there is no difficulty; because the sensible body is more noble than the organ of the animal, in so far as it is compared to it as a being in act to a being in potentiality; even as the object actually colored is compared to the pupil which is potentially colored. It may, however, be said, although the first impression of the imagination is through the agency of the sensible, since “fancy is movement produced in accordance with sensation” (De Anima iii, 3), that nevertheless there is in man an operation which by synthesis and analysis forms images of various things, even of things not perceived by the senses. And Augustine’s words may be taken in this sense.

Reply to Objection 3. Sensitive knowledge is not the entire cause of intellectual knowledge. And therefore it is not strange that intellectual knowledge should extend further than sensitive knowledge.
newadvent.org/summa/1084.htm#article6

 

[tonyrey]

**It is too bad that you did not read further because Aquinas’ point is that the “entire truth” does not come from the senses, but that synthesis and analysis using the intellect can and does form “images” or conceptions (concepts) that are not perceived by the senses, but are derived through the senses from what Aquinas calls “sensitive” knowledge that he distinguishes from “intellectual” knowledge.
**

Incontrovertible!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Inocente

I’ve not read him, only parts of the Summa. It’s worth quoting a bit to to prove that yet again, philosophers disagree:

That philosophers disagree proves nothing against philosophy.

If it did, the fact that scientists disagree would prove that science also is useless.

 

[tonyrey]

Inocente

I’ve not read him, only parts of the Summa. It’s worth quoting a bit to to prove that yet again, philosophers disagree:

That philosophers disagree proves nothing against philosophy.

If it did, the fact that scientists disagree would prove that science also is useless.

Irrefutable. Disagreement merely proves the obvious: the truth is not always obvious - but I should have thought it is obvious the truth is not always obvious!