On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:26:15 +0000 (UTC), Dave Oldridge
<doldridg@leavethisoutshaw.ca> wrote:
telige@mail.clara.fl.com (William)
Dave Oldridge<doldridg@leavethisoutshaw.ca> wrote:
telige@mail.clara.fl.com (William) wrote in
Please explain what these other methods you have to test spiritual
claims (other than asserting that one is right and the others are
wrong).
Revelation, tradition, prayer, meditation, theurgy. All can be used to
some extent to test spiritual claims.
OK, that identifies your methods. Please explain how these methods
test spiritual claims - and most importantly how they verify or
falsify spiritual claims (there are a lot of mutually contradictory
spiritual claims out there).
Revelation and tradition, of course, incorporate the experience of earlier
seekers. Prayer (and theurgy which is a form of prayer) is, of course, a
two-way communication, sometimes claimed to have physically-testable
results.
But unfortunately not on any convincing statistical basis. The bottom
line is that things happen and some people pray and others don't. If
prayer had a physically testable result there would be a significant
statistical trend - in fact (according to NT teaching), more than a
trend.
Tests have been set up to try and find a bias but the numbers have
been too small and the results ambiguous.
It seems that verification of spiritual claims by spiritual
interaction with the physical world is a no-goer. Which is strange
because in the past (and particularly in biblical times) it was seen
as one of the major planks of authentication for spiritual claims.
You left out a very important adjective. It is PHYSICAL reality that
science filters out false claims about. Science cannot say much about
non-physical aspects of reality.
I think we are talking about all reality. If the supernatural and
spiritual realm are part of reality then that is the collective
reality I am talking about.
Yes, but science can only test physical claims. Science cannot tell you if
God loves you. It cannot really even tell you that God exists, since the
universe is created so that you have to take that on faith to at least some
degree.
I accept that science (or more to the point, the scientific method)
cannot verify or falsify spiritual/supernatural claims unless the
claim is linked to a testable physical event that defies science.
What I am asking is how these claims can be verified or falsified by
the methods you suggest. It seems to me, from what you said at the
beginning, that they cannot. The appeal has to be made to revelation
and tradition and 'faith' (but not faith based on testable evidence).
Each of these seems to be different aspects of the same thing and
therefore a circular method of testing.
Again, if there is an aspect of reality that the scientific method
cannot test then how do you test it (ie, filter out valid claims about
it from the false ones). As in the world covered by the scientific
method, if claims cannot be verified or falsified then any claim is as
valid as any other.
As with any system of knowledge, one seeks to know the basic axioms and to
organize a consistent framework around them.
The mystic is no less logical than the scientist, though the axioms from
which he reasons may be different.
The axioms of science are very few (probably just that there is an
objective reality and that it is logical) and they are shared by
everyone - we could not function without them. And they have to be
axiomatic since they inherently cannot be argued for without first
assuming them. You'll have to tell me what 'mystical' axioms come into
that category. The presence of many different and mutually
contradictory mystical frameworks must raise the obvious question.
William
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