Near as I can tell, Coyne's view is that science is the only path to truth (a problematic claim and one I hope I've misunderstood), and that any other enterprise which purports to produce truth is therefore in competition with science, and ought to be opposed as such. My view is that science has no monopoly on truth claims nor on knowledge, and that other ways of evaluating truth claims are not problematic so long as they are not imposed on others, and don't interfere with anyone's ability to pursue their own course. I oppose authoritarianism, a phenomenon which occurs in some religious communities (but not all), and in various other political and cultural contexts.

I really don't understand how Joshua can say that he's just fine with all sorts of different "ways of knowing" so long as their believers don't try to impose them on others, while working for a group which seeks to impose its favored "way of knowing" on schoolkids all over the U.S. Isn't this just hypocrisy on a grand scale? Doesn't this demonstrate all the philosophical dressings to be nothing more than obscuring pretensions, and the critique of philosophical naivete to be particularly obscene?

Rosenau wrote:

To return, then, to ways of knowing, I'll define them as systematic methods of evaluating truth claims against new sources of knowledge...

And how, precisely, is "literature" in any way a "systematic method[] of evaluating truth claims against new sources of knowledge?" Will you be defining the word "literature" in such a way as to include only those works which are serious examinations of serious questions, and excluding all works which consist of stuff the author just made up for fun? Since it's inconvenient, we can ignore the fact that serious literature often disagrees with other serious literature regarding their truth claims.

But more importantly, Mr. Rosenau, you seem to be making the same mistake in these latest two posts that you were making four posts ago: confusing the conveyance of knowledge (or "delivery" of knowledge, to use Kazez's term) with the discernment of knowledge.

For example, the Bible may convey many truths, but it doesn't help in the matter of telling truth from falsehood (in fact, it muddies the waters by giving out self-contradictory advice on discriminating between the good and the bad).

Literature, art, golf, chess (etc.) may all convey truths, but they aren't tools for learning what's true and what's not. That is the goal of science, and that's what makes it a "way of knowing" while all those other human endeavors are not, no matter how many truths they actually do deliver, or how much meaning people derive from them.

That's why we don't teach literature in science classes, which you should already understand, given your job and your studies.

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

It is important to realize that our desire to protect the integrity of science as a distinct intellectual discipline is not an attempt to elevate science above all other intellectual endeavors; quite the contrary. Science is one way of knowing the world ; it is not the only way of knowing, and it is certainly not the only way of knowing everything. Indeed, in the grand scheme of human thought and action, the domain of science is modest — the realm of natural phenomena. Science, as it has developed historically, will not and can never tell us anything about the nature of beauty, or the attributes of justice, or the qualities of goodness. There are many ideas and many truths (like the belief that all people are created equal, or that they have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) upon which science must remain mute.

Supernatural creation stories may, in fact, be true; but science, as only one way of knowing, will never tell us this.

Science is simply not equipped to speak on supernatural issues, and it would be a mistake to try to force it to do so.