Listen, Frazzled...
You can say that we are "limiting" our scope of scientific knowledge by RESTRICTING SCIENCE to the physical realm all you want. CLEARLY, you have not read Bacon yet. The FACT remains that PHYSICAL SCIENCE allows no room for SUPERNATURAL events and other bullshit wishful thinking fabrications from the people that you are defending. If you can't figure out why SCIENCE concerns itself with the PHYSICAL, instead of the bullshit METAphysical, then so be it.
I mean, I don't have a degree from the vatican but at least I can fathom the significance of the word PHYSICAL in PHYSICAL SCIENCE.
(which, if you are keeping track, is WHY you can't provide a single experiment or provide the slightest bit of tangible evidence. METAPHYSICS =/ physical science.
The slightest bit of INtangible evidence you mean? You don't need an experiment to know intangibles exist. Your feelings are just one example of an intangible. Anger, love, happiness, contentment -all exist but without any physical location. So are they real? If so, just where are those located and how do we measure them? Or are they just the result of chemical reactions in your body? In fact, scientists have discovered the EMOTION comes first -then the chemical reaction in response to that emotion. For example, in the "flight-or-fight" reaction it is fear felt first, THEN the "flight-or-fight" reaction from the adrenaline rush as a result of the emotion of fear. And that makes total sense if you think about it. In order to feel fear, an organism must first be AWARE and conscious of danger (two more intangibles). Once it identifies a danger, THEN it experiences the emotion of fear -and THEN the body responds to that emotion with a chemical reaction that might assist the organism in somehow dealing with the situation at hand.
So do we really we understand the origins of emotion any better than they did 500 years ago? How about better than 1000 years ago? We actually know very little more in that area than they did centuries ago.
What we have discovered so far about emotions actually DEFIES the materialism paradigm which says that everything that exists can be reduced to a physical process. But in the case of emotion, it is an INTANGIBLE that exists first -and then the physical process of a chemical reaction follows.
The reality is after centuries, we are still struggling with some of the very same questions the "ancients" had -questions we, as a species, have always had. And Bacon -who wanted to restore the "wisdom" of the ancients - couldn't answer those either. He just tried to place limits on the questions we should pursue. Does that mean we just assume they cannot ever be answered just because the "acceptable" PERSPECTIVE in approaching such questions rules out the possibility of even attempting to answer them?
If you rule out even the POSSIBILITY that the answers involve more than you can hear, see, taste, smell and feel and can physically measure -then you have ARBITRARILY put limits on yourself and your ability to gain knowledge -and on the basis that whatever you cannot feel with your senses and physically measure, just isn't real. But you already know that just isn't true. Humans have been making that same mistake all along -and it wasn't until someone realized that MORE exists out there beyond our physical senses, which are quite limited and moreso than many other species - that we gained greater knowledge. If we limited ourselves to just our physical senses and ability to measure it and decide that anything that falls outside that range just doesn't exist -then discoveries we have already made and incorporated into our lives would be impossible.
So by WHAT possible logic can you claim that everything around us must somehow function in accordance with the limitations of OUR senses in some way or another - and set limits as to exactly where that ends? Even though you choose to limit yourself to that -by means of what "logic" can you claim that all scientists must also limit themselves the very same way?
I should think the answer would be obvious to you. We just don't know what we can discover by NOT limiting ourselves and by approaching a question from a totally new and different perspective -until we TRY. But to say we shouldn't even TRY by any other means but a materialism approach is simply repeating the errors of the past and just another version of believing that if we couldn't see it with the naked eye, then it just doesn't exist.
