: : I have little problem with most of what you say, however I do not think we can confine our realm of knowledge only to the scientific. The sentence 'god does not exist' still has a truth value. It is just that scientific method does not allow it to be proven. : : That it cannot be proven scientifically does not in my opinion warrant a conclusion that we should thereby exclude it.
: : Although it may lack the precision of scientific method and as such not be so certain, so conclusive we can still argue about the existance of god with the use of reason and the use of empirical data.
: Fair enough, however, Korzybski (and semanticists in general, I suspect) would argue that the absence of evidence reduces the argument to one of advocacy. Given no test parameters that would answer the question one way or another, any debate on the subject is ultimately meaningless. IOW, we can be no more, no less productive "debating" the existence or non-existence of God than we can sitting around making monkey noises at each other. Since the net change in the universe resulting from such a discussion is pretty much zero, what's the point, really? Any debate over the reality of a non-empirical entity that has no measurable effect on the universe is going to devolve into "is not" "is too!" "is not!" "is too!" Depending on the sophistication of the participants, this will be more or less obvious, but at the core, that's all the debate can be. I'm not saying that we should never discuss the topic (in fact, I do a lot of things that have no apparent effects on the universe) but rather that the discussion has no hope of convincing advocates of either side to give up their beliefs. There is no supporting evidence for either side, so partisanship on either side seems to rely on a leap of faith. I am not feeling energetic enough to leap, that's all. I've often felt that the difference between "leaps of faith" and "jumping to conclusions" was small to non-existent. I'm not saying that you shouldn't make whatever assertions you wish, only that these assertions must, by nature, be based on zero evidence, and personally, I prefer to spend my time on more practical persuits. I admit that is only my personal taste though. If you wish to incorporate non-scientific sources of knowledge into your world-view, I wouldn't dream of critiquing you for that. Some of my favorite people do so all the time.
I disagree that 'assertions' that cannot be tested scientifically must be based on zero evidence. There are ways of proving things outside of scientific method. It is, as i have said, just that they lack the clarity of science.
By way of evidence against christianity i could sight such matters as inconsistency in the bible, logical arguments against the christian god (for instance Hume's miracle argument), the 12 testaments, and more. It is true that none of these goes to a conclusive proof. I would however consider them persuasive.
The problem with this method in dealing with christians is of course that they are not rational agents when dealing with these matters. When confronted with reasoned arguments of god's existence they are prone to slink back into their mantra that it is their 'faith' that guides them.
Nevertheless such a retreat tends to suggest a weakness in a christian's argument, 'because it is' does not really suffice as an answer in any argument that i have been involved in (well for my part at least). (Indeed i wonder if revelation could really be considered as knowledge at all.)
At any rate as you have been questioning the veracity of non-scientific knowing, perhaps i should question you as to the basis of scientific knowing. Now, in my green salad days, i seem to recall doing a course that raised such matters as Kuhn, Duhem-Quine and postmodernism, all of which questioned the objectivity of the scientific method. sO, the question being: Is there any truth at all? (Socratic maxims notwithstanding).
