Just the Facts Ma'am

Esteban, as a former choirboy, let me ask you this: What HAS Divine wisdom taught you?

Phatboy,Divine wisdom hasn't taught me anything. And if I want to know about natural phenomena, I use human wisdom to educate myself. Why would I go to the Bible to learn about biology? Why would I pray to understand the common ancestry of life on Earth? These things have been explained using human wisdom that anyone, regardless of their philosophical or religious background, can access and understand.If there is a factual basis for God's existence, I haven't seen it. If such supernatural reality can be understood by human minds, I'm unaware of the methodology for doing so. This makes it all a matter of opinion, Phatboy. However, the Earth being billions of years old, or the common ancestry of organisms on Earth, can certainly be supported by evidence. Denying these things is delusional. It's not a matter of opinion.regards,
Esteban "Ex Lion Tamer" Hambre

Well, Esteban I will have to admit. You are honest and you truly did give me "just the facts." Would you classify yourself as an agnostic, then? Did you grow up believing something else? Regards, "Curious George"Phatboy

Phatboy,I grew up in a religious family, but I've never had a religious experience and the notion doesn't mean much to me. If I had to classify myself I would say 'agnostic.' I don't know or care whether the material world we can observe is all that exists, or whether it's a mere subset of all that exists. For now, material reality is all we have to work with and the rest is fantasy.regards,
Esteban "Quotidian" Hambre

I would define a fact as something that is intersubjective. I wouldn't use the word objective, since we will never know if our senses are fooling us. Anyway, an intersubjective experience is something that can be experienced by everyone and described in the same way. For instance, the Eiffel Tower is 200 meters high (just pulling a number out of the air). Everyone can measure the height and come to the same conclusion, within perhaps a few centimeters. So intersubjective observations and measurements are facts. In dating rocks, the ratios between the isotopes is a fact. A fact is something that can't be denied, or accepted knowing that its veracity could be tested at any time by anyone using a predefined method.Then comes the difficult part, relating between facts. This step is not factual, but rather interpretational. Using the dating example, the interpretation of that isotope ratio is used to date the rock. However, the age of that rock is not a fact, but rather a well supported interpretation. The strength of science is its ability logically relate facts into a theory. Not only does science relate facts in order to support a theory, it also relates facts in a way that could potentially falsify the theory. Using radiometric dating again, measuring the isotope ratios in rocks of a known age is a perfect example of testing the falsibility of the method and theory.Religious facts take a different turn. These facts are intrasubjective. Although I will agree that there are philisophical truths imbedded in religion, there is still a lack of concrete facts like those found in science. One person's spiritual experience can not be fully communicated nor modeled so that another person can have the same exact experience. I don't see this as a weakness, but rather as a barrier that can not be crossed.