"but is what our mind makes of the various aspects of what the senses perceive"
Ahh but now you come back to the point I was trying to make; that of the A Priori biases that make up the mind as it tries to categorize sense perceptions into meaningful data and knowledge...these biases can "color" our conclusions.
No human is ultimately free of those Biases though we can learn to isolate those biases in our own thinking when attempting objectivity in our examinings. The secular Scientist who scoffs at the religious scientist who attempts to offer an alternate view in a plausible scientific manner needs to examine himself as to why he is scoffing? If the religious scientist has cut corners and shaded data to fit a religious view...then yes he should be taken to task.
If the religious scientist is being scoffed at simply because of his Godly world view and his work ignored, inspite of the scientist's vigourous scientific work which cuts no corners and can be repeatedly demonstrated, well then it seems that the secular scientist is guilty of Bias.
The concept of the existence of God is a scientific tautology as you know, a concept of which, science can neither say yay or nay! When a secular minded scientist( who may be atheistic or agnostic at best) decides that a Christian scientist can not be trusted to turn in quality work SIMPLY BECAUSE he has Godly world view, he has decided based on his own emotionalism and biases against religion, not by any scientific basis....there-fore he violates the very scientific method he claims to cherish!
Let me emphasize that I acknowledge that some creationists have practised bad science which gives a bad name to those who may have a more legitimate and rigourous scientific approach who are working in that field. But to say that the whole field of Creation and ID research is illegitimate science belies a bias against the tautologous.
Science can't speak for the veracity the tautologous as the tautologous are not falsifiable, yet it can't speak against this veracity either. Many secular scientists seem to have forgotten this latter point!
Of course. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what is a priori in intuition, but one man's junkpile is another man's goldmine. Pick an example. At one time electric attraction was action at a distance. Then one man--no math!--saw electric fields and now we all see electric fields. What is a priori there?