Friday, October 29, 2021

A Shared Epistemological Barrier In Science And Divine Revelation

Scientific ideas and religious ideas are often treated as if there are two completely different epistemological standards, with all religious systems dismissed as claims to truth based on lack of absolute certainty and scientific ideas popular at a given time accepted in spite of the lack of absolute certainty for whether scientific observations even amount to more than purely subjective perceptions.  The existence of God [1] aside, as there is an uncaused cause and this can be proven no matter the truth or falsity of any religion, and the existence of the external world aside, as there is a way to prove that some sort of matter exists [2], scientific paradigms and specific religions fall into perfectly parallel epistemological categories.

Any scientific idea--not any epistemological idea about science, as that would be conceptual or pertaining to logic and thus ultimately not empirical--and any religion that goes beyond the provable metaphysics of basic theism are not true by logical necessity, as scientific laws and certain aspects of God's nature could have all been different than they are.  If something could not have been any other way, it can only be known if it necessarily follows from something that could not have been any other way: logical axioms like the inherent truth of sound deductive reasoning and the inherent nature of various things.  However, they can still be true because it is logically possible for them to match reality.

Both certain scientific paradigms and Christianity have evidence that suggests they are true, but evidence is not logical proof.  It does not follow from repeatedly seeing rain fall from clouds that weather is anything more than a hallucination, just as it does not follow from reading first century historians as they speak about Jesus that the universe and all its inhabitants have even around for more than a moment, much less the thousands of years of history Christianity seems to fit into.  All historical documentation, like all scientific observations, are incapable of proving anything more than that there is evidence that is fallible, incomplete, and philosophically inferior to the absolute certainty of logical truth and introspective states.

Either way, regardless of whether any specific religion or scientific paradigm is true, there are intrinsic epistemological limitations humans have that prevent people from proving and therefore from knowing things in certain categories.  The exact appearance of the external world and the moral nature of the uncaused cause, if it has one in the first place, cannot be known.  Only logical possibilities (as opposed to self-refuting impossibilities) and evidences (as opposed to whether things in these categories are actually true) can be known with absolute certainty, in that one can know with absolute certainty that some scientific ideas contradict themselves or that some religions could be true, as well as whether or not it truly seems like one of these things is true thanks to evidence.

There is nothing about a scientific theory that has an epistemological advantage over an evidence-fortified religion like Christianity.  Both of them cannot be proven.  Both of them can be supported with evidences accumulated from perceptions, and both can be proven to be logically possible even apart from analyzing the actual evidence for them.  Their shared epistemological barrier is that it does not logically follow from anything about the core concepts themselves (other than certain facts like the existence of an uncaused cause and an external world) or even the evidences themselves that they must be true.  A truly rational person does not think that the epistemological standard is different for different ideologies: absolute logical certainty through self-verification or airtight deduction.



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