In the thread where this "knowledge" topic originated, Alamo-Girl also questioned my segregation of theological items (direct revelation and faith in another's revelation). The reason I gave her was this:
As for revelation, how would we decide if it goes, say, before or after the calculation of an eclipse? And where do we rank (on our scale of "certainty") the faith of the person who reads about a revelation and decides to believe it? I don't want to start a knife fight over this, but you asked why I listed the theological items separately. That's why.She wasn't pleased, but like the sweetheart she is, she let me have my own list, and she made hers. That's how we ended up with two separate lists.
I can elaborate a bit further. Purely theological matters, which are the subject of revelation, being of a spiritual nature, are not objectively verifiable in this world. (We've discussed the limitations of science many times in the past). Therefore knowledge of such matters is, at least to me, of a different nature than the knowledge discussed in the earlier part of my list. It can't be observed, etc. So to me, it deserves a separate treatment. I don't think of it as a ghetto. To me, it's a separate domain of knowledge.
I respectfully disagree. The problem I see with your theory is it presumes that there is some value to your opinion one way or another. That is a basic fallacy of humans, IMHO (see #43). If for example, I say "I don't believe Paris, France exists" (I'm such a sweet talker) Pretty much everyone would dismiss my opinions because they believe it does exist, and some number of us are fairly certain because they've been there. It should be obvious that my belief that it doesn't exist has no actual effect on whether it is there or not.
Similarly, if I say "I believe in God" and another says "I don't believe in God", neither of our opinions has the slightest relevance whatsoever to whether or not HE really does exist. Our beliefs only serve to inform our own decisions. The more accurate our beliefs, the better (usually) our decisions.
I am not implying that your (in the generic sense) opinion is unimportant, I'm saying that it is non-important because even "unimportant" can imply some non-zero value to its worth.
This philosophy can be viewed as the antithesis of post-modern relativism, a rediculous philosophy that exalts feelings over thoughts, opinion over fact, and process over result.
I see a lot of posts here where people interpret meaning out of what they think of things, and I believe that is exactly the most meaningless measure there is.
But Patrick, you continue to evade the very point I'm trying to make. The revelation, the "spiritual nature," is trying to tell you about the very shape of nature itself, of the Universe. Or more specifically, the relations that obtain between God and man and nature and society, the whole and part, humanity and the Universe -- in all their variegated mutual, synergistic relations.
And if you have the eyes to observe what is around you in nature, and the ears to "hear" what that means, then you can rationally, "objectively verify" the dual account we have from God Himself, revealed in the Book of Scripture (revelation by Creator), and the Book of Nature (revelation by Creation). Both accounts accord beautifully.
If you think there is an ounce of "religiosity" or "sectarianism" in that view, I would think you are mistaken. My love is philosophy (after God only), but my very next loves are human history and culture. I consider mathematics the "queen" of human inquiry, and science her "handmaiden." And based on all the things that I have worked at and studied and lived through in my life so far, my center of Truth is to be found in Revelation and Creation, as attested to by millennia of human experience and insight, as confirmed by me by means of reflection on my own personal experience.
As a student of human cultures, I think I can say with some confidence that the central problems/insights of human existential experience are the same across all human cultures. Different cultures articulate their experiences differently. But at the end of the day, all cultures manifest the same concerns, and answer them in remarkably similar ways.
The shorthand description of how humans have historically managed to do this is they simply acknowledged: God is Truth. There is no truth without God. I don't care whether you're a Greek or a Christian or a Viking or an American Indian or a Hindu or Buddhist or Taoist -- the cross-cultural, central insight of the human race has never varied from the acknowledgement of God as the foundation of Truth -- until very recent times.
Even the most primitive cultures extant in our own time acknowledge this central truth, and we can observe this in their living traditions and institutions.
FWIW dear, huggable Patrick.
Here are a few notes I've formed from studies in epistemology, or as I find it more appropriate to term episteology.
The simplest secular definition of knowledge I have found in literature is that of a 'soundly justified, true, belief'.
Most philosophical paradoxes I've encountered, which tend to tickle the imagination or problem solving faculties tend to form off of 1 to 4 of the following topics being slightly muddled or confused between one another.
Those topics include: Gnosis, Epignosis, belief, faith, meaning, memory, identity/identification, naming, justification, psychological certainty, perception, experience, intuition, insight, passion, emotion, logic, understanding, truth, validity, soundness, judgment, volition, image, and several other topics mentioned in these threads which I find to be composites of the above,..in hallucination, 'common sense', mistakes, error, revelation, to name but a few.
Most of these I understood or had studied in college, prior to a studious approach to Scripture.
Since that time, I firmly recommend studying some other areas not generally as well received in modern secular approaches to epistemology. Namely, discern the meanings and differences between 'body', 'soul', and 'spirit'. There is just as much, and (well arguably) more significance to the spirit and spiritual aspects of Scripture and reationship with God by His plan as in any study of the sciences upon the physical or domain of bodily things.
Within that study, especially if one begins with rudiments of Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, words such as 'pistis', sarx, soma, pneuma, nephesh, and pseuch, arise plentifully and with explicit import to topics such as salvation and regeneration of the human spirit.
Even the word pistis, which is translated to 'faith' and associated with an initial 'saving faith' for an unbeliever, is also used in context of the believer, later in thinking and frequently translated as 'doctrine'.
This topic might not seem that important or nonchalently grouped into topics of superstition or allegory by Western secular thinking, but what is sometimes more astounding to such 'empiricists' is exposure to material events where 'faith' actually coincides with a material change not explicable by practical empirical methods otherwise.
Some insight is gleaned by simply studying some obvious Scripture on topics such as miracles. E.g, Christ walking on water, and Peter also performing the same, but then sinking,...Old Testament passages of rods being cast to the ground and becoming serpants, and another one eating the other serpants,...turning water into wine...
Etymological studies into science, physics and especially chemistry reveal a significant amount of dabblings into the occult where issues such as faith and belief bore significance to empirical outcomes.
Gnostics (although I assert were heretical) still may have touched upon some truth in portions of their practices, placing importance on belief influencing reality.
Consider one gnostic counterargument to modern day rational empiricism, that the most significant aspect of the scientific method or Cartesian thinking is that it encourages a common belief in nonacceptance or belief or hypothesis until it is proven. Such a system of belief in and of itself, by gnostic methods, influences reality itself.
Events which used to be considered miracles, today are influenced by a broad based perception and belief structures which influence actual physical outcomes, hence a 'rigged game', so to speak when positing science.
Those performing the experiment, if something new and unique, might indeed have their hypostheses confirmed by empirical results, in part because they hypothesized and believed they would occur in their measurements.
Conversely, where their hypotheses failed, other thinkers may have influenced the universe to the point that consistency and significant interaction with thought counteracted the less influential hypothesis.
I don't fully agree with such a position, however, I must freely admit I have witnessed physical phenomenon, not explicable by empirical methods, and highly contradictory to even the most basic of scientifuc methods, which were very closely associated to faith and knowledge, perhaps uniquely isolated from the other categories mentioned in the first several paragraphs.