[Ascaloth]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

I should apologize, my previous post was admittedly somewhat convoluted.
The attempt to implement Marxism was born, in my estimation, of a somewhat arrogant mentality and of looking at the issue at face value. Indeed you're right, it's not really the case that empiricism or the scientific method are wrong, but rather how people view them.

In other words, by making an example of the supposed arrogance of those who tried to implement the Marxist ideology, you're trying to accuse those who hold the scientific method in the highest regard of the same arrogance; in short, you're simply making an argumentum ad hominem, without trying to explain why they're wrong. Noted.

A lot of people make that argument, and with it, some assumptions. They believe that empiricism is not only the best way to create an airplane or machine gun, or otherwise explain hard facts, but also the best way to live and regard life. Richard Dawkins is a good example, as well as a mass of people who claim, rather inanely, religious faith to be evil and blinding.

The point is not to find an alternative to empiricism; we already know that casting spells will not manufacture gold or allow one to fly, but rather to rectify the very mentality or consciousness that people hold towards existence. It would be wrong, in my view, to approach God or the divine as though they could be understood in human terms. Likewise, it would be wrong to hold empiricism and science as a god, which I feel some people do even if they would never admit to such a thing. The two concepts should and do ideally occupy different levels in man's awareness. Newton, for instance, used empirical methods to correctly determine physical laws, but simultaneously acknowledged a divine nature behind it all. He was willing to admit that what he discovered was neither whole nor absolute, and this is how scientists and people in general should conduct themselves.

Likewise, religious people would be idiots to deny, in the modern age, the efficacy of science and its method. They should not place faith on the same level as science, for the two are fundamentally different and should take different places in human intellect and character.

Your repeated attempt at an ad hominem aside, I can summarize your three paragraphs' worth of text by pointing to Stephen Jay Gould's concept of non-overlapping magisteria. Which brings me to this point; if you're going to argue that a God exists, then that amounts to an existence claim, and thus a scientific claim which can, in principle, tested for the material effects of such an existence. If science and faith are genuinely non-overlapping magisteria, then supernatural beings could not possibly have any effect on the real world; in that case, what does it matter if they exist or not?

NOMA only exists as a concept because there is no evidence for the existence of a deity. You're just trying to defend an indefensible point by trying to place it beyond the scope of rational inquiry, without any justification for it.

See above.

I believe I asked you for some examples of the "other ways of knowing" you alluded to in your previous post. I'm still waiting.