Your first point makes no sense whatsoever, it's just a bunch of confusing words put together, try again.
sorry i used some big words arranged in a fashion that you don't understand. i'll break it down for you. you are expressing epistemological nihilism. you deny that meaning of scientific knowledge could be qualitatively different or superior to that of any other, because you claim the tools we use to find scientific knowledge (such as empiricism and rationality) require "faith", just as religious knowledge does. the pursuant equivocation between religious and scientific knowledge is downright intellectually fraudulent.
science is a discussion. it does not demand faith in its priors like any religious dogma does. instead, as a logical system of knowledge, it asks its participants to agree on a few priors (or discuss them, ergo the philosophy of science) which is by definition necessary. however, it is a fundamentally sceptical program (thanks to descartes) and it is not predicated on priors that are supernatural and begging of the question. it is therefore a naturalistic program that implores its participants to value 1) the verifiability of knowledge and 2) the falsifiability of knowledge. this is the epistemology of science. faith in its epistemology is irrelevant: agreement is sufficient. why is this important? because as a sceptical project the amount of evidence for a theory is determines its value, not the strength of belief in it. for instance, the theory of gravity is not considered valid because of the strength of belief in it, but the amount of evidence there is for it. this is why our modern theory of gravity trumps, for instance, the Aristotelian physics: there is far more evidence for the modern theory. but this doesn't mean that the modern theory is correct,
it simply has the greatest amount of evidence for it; it is the most correct
Epistemology requires faith. It requires faith that ontology is correct. The same applies for scientific conclusions and the scientific method, which is epistemology, but requires a presupposed dogmatic belief in the onotogical aspects of the world or the universe it is studying.
patently false. the scientific epistemology is not dogmatic and does not require faith, although i fear you simply say this because you're using the word so lightly. your chronology of ontology and epistemology is naive. you think that we have to know the nature of things before we can know how we know the nature of things? this is an absurd statement. how can ontology precede epistemology? they are frustratingly simultaneous! i also think you are essentially confusing what the epistemology of religious and scientific knowledge really is. the critera for religious knowledge, among others, are things like revelation, tradition, intuition and faith. the criteria for scientific knowledge are correspondence, coherence, transitivity and consistency etc. sometimes these things overlap; often, they don't (which is what is most important).
the virtue of science is that it is a pragmatic program. you can have zero faith in its epistemology and ontology, and be persuaded by the predictive value of its models i.e. the ontology and epistemology of science can be of value to you only so far as they are ultimately useful to you; no faith required in the truth of its priors. this is fundamentally different to the religious program, which cannot fundamentally be a pragmatic project; it demands the acceptance of its priors as
fundamentally true - you must be a true believer i.e. there IS a god, a universal consciousness, seven planes of existence, etc.
you have to believe that matter came into existence by itself and then arranged itself into information systems—that is what goes against real science, and that sounds like faith to me.
i don't have to believe anythingm. this is the
whole fucking point of science. if the emergent arrangement of information systems is consistent with the broader corpus of scientific knowledge, i may not reject it. but i don't have to accept it. protip: you don't have to believe in the big bang to be a scientist. when someone says they "believe in the big bang theory", this is not a claim of scientific knowledge. what they mean is that "the big bang is a plausible theory" and is convincing because it makes less assumptions than any metaphysical conclusion. but they would not say it is scientific knowledge because we haven't been able to reproduce it (yet) in lab conditions. but guess what? the big bang theory is fucking irrelevant to 99.9999% of science out there - the origin of existence is just something we like to know and take a swing at.
Aristotelian philosophy is still a major part of Western philosophy, his philosophical arguments have stood the test of time.
this is
the whole fucking point about science: if aristotle made correct claims, there is no reason to throw them out (e.g. they offend my glorious god). science doesn't hold a grudge, nor is there any lord of science or avatar of Science on earth. the scientific project is cumulative and self-reflexive, which in my opinion gives it an aesthetic appeal over any dogmatic project. i think you'll also find that aristotle's scientific claims that have withstood the test of time have done so
exactly because he did them scientifically: i.e. he used logic and observation (satisfying criteria of consistency, correspondence and coherence) and experimentation: he cut fish and shit open and catalouged what he found; he observed bee hives and explained how bee society worked. you'll also find that the reason for the vitality of aristotle's project is that
the catholic church upheld it as absolutely true and would kill, excommunicate, or otherwise reprimand you if you contradicted him: only a few people were allowed to do so (i.e. thomas of aquin). we would surely not be in the position we were today if descarte, gallileo, kepler or leibniz or others were violently silenced. i can't really blame the catholic church for this, mind you. the overarching goal of any organisation (yeah, even organised religions) is the most base instinct of survival.
In my opinion this is the only thing that matters, as it is only through philosophy that one can really question the existence of God, science cannot.
science can't prove the existence or not of god? oh, what a scholar you are!
Based on your third, fourth and fifth points, would that mean you're an agnostic, not an atheist?
if you were to press me on it, i would agree with a characterisation as agnostic. i think that, overall, religion and metaphysics are absurd projects. you mention that you have felt "the special presence of God." i can hardly dissuade you of this idea, nor would I ever ridicule you about it - maybe you have. however, i think the leap from feeling a presence to organised religion is a complete non-sequitor. for this reason i can appreciate deism as a metaphysical position, and wishy washy organisations like the Quakers and liberal lutherans that make so very dogmatic demands of their followers.
At the end of the day it doesn't really matter or count for anything. I believe in God and have felt the special presence of God. No post will change that, neither will any post I make change your mind.
although my mind is not made up, i hold your righteousness in contempt.
also, considering i am a man of science, i do not consider one data point (e.g. an interaction with god) or a small data set (a relationship with god) sufficient evidence for praising yahweh.
