Abraham Vs. Aristotle

I’ve been reading one guy here and another guy here and here. They talk about Hebrew/Middle Eastern (H/ME) epistemology, the existence of which I and most other Christians are aware and utilize under different names and applications. H/ME relies heavily on revelatory knowledge—our radar aimed at the metaphysical or supernatural—as a legitimate form of knowing things. Contrast this with Aristotelian epistemology that Western Civ is based on, where knowledge is acquired solely through human faculties.

Naturally, some say that these two ways of knowledge gathering are incompatible, but I think the rejections of one for the other is too hasty. They simply need proper application. We use Aristotle to apprehend the physical world, and we use H/ME to apprehend supernatural things. Someone who is wholly given to one or the other framework can just slip the other one in if they’re not cowed by their own fundamentalism. I’m making it sound like it’s buttering a slice of bread but accepting a different way of knowing things can be life-shattering in extreme cases.

Most people, without knowing it, use both already—the religious zealot “uses science” even though it’s hedged in some by his religious belief structure. Anyone who has watched more than 20 minutes of American TV programming is already aware of this type of person. But even skeptics and atheists use their sense of the divine. Coming to the conclusion that the supernatural doesn’t exist does not come about through Aristotelian ways. It comes through the skeptic’s sensus divinatus, however damaged (unrepared, really) the theist considers the skeptic’s apparatus to be, that nothing is “out there”. Logic, the senses, memories, et al., are fundamentally unable to answer questions about things outside of the universe(s). Determining anything about it, I believe, is read on the output tape spat out by the H/ME apparatus.

Even the smart Aristotelian skeptic of religion, if he isn’t hobbled by his own pride, can believe that the conclusions of theists the world over can be legitimately arrived at through the H/ME method. The theist comes to conclusions, through revelatory knowledge, about the supernatural (namely that it exists, for starters) and has not encountered real defeaters for his theistic belief. He has done his duty in just the same way the skeptic has done his, by using his sensus. The state of post-Sagan skepticism, though, is too mired in its own back-patting that admitting that theism, even if completely dead wrong, isn’t a result of neurosis or conspiracy. The generous skeptic scenario is mostly out of the picture.