If it's worth reading (i.e., not too inflammatory), I'll be reopening it.

I haven't set a high bar for determining what counts as a valid source of knowledge, though. I'm simply saying that whatever epistemological system is the correct one must, of necessity, not be self-refuting, because a thing which self-refuting cannot possibly be true. You are correct to say we simply have to accept scientism's assumptions. (Scientism, by the way, is the more general sense in which I meant "positivism.") The problem is that scientism gives us no reason to do so; in fact, if we apply it rigorously, it positively disqualifies the validity of those assumptions precisely because science itself cannot furnish them. In essence, what scientism ends up saying is, "Metaphysics is bunk, except the ones necessary to validate this claim." But why should we let it make such an unprincipled exception? You are right that establishing that there are valid forms of knowledge beyond what are revealed to us by science tells us nothing about God or theistic principles in general. It's not intended to. This post was just to establish that metaphysical speculation of the sort indulged in by Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Edward Feser, et al., is *in principle* legitimate -- that we cannot disqualify them simply because they are nonscientific.

Hello RClosser, welcome to the blog. As you say, at best science can offer us plenty of evidence for the assertion that there is exactly one line which can connect any two points in space. But then no one goes around saying "this claim [basically Euclid's first axiom] is supported by the evidence." They say that it is *true*, a judgment which science itself cannot furnish. Indeed, it cannot *not* be true, and we don't need science or even empirical observation of any sort to tell us this. Euclid predates the formalization of the scientific method by a millennium or two, after all. But I see what you're getting at, so let's take an example of something that is also regarded as obviously true which we know despite its nonempirical nature: the validity of scientific evidence. After all, scientific evidence can only be interpreted on the basis of the assumption that (a) objective reality exists and (b) our senses are basically capable of discerning its nature. A deficiency in either of these respects is sufficient to call scientific knowledge into question. But notice that these are pre-scientific assumptions. Science itself cannot furnish evidence to support them, or rather, we could only accept that evidence with an a priori assumption that science is basically valid as a means of acquiring knowledge. In any event, this is a nonscientific and metaphysical assertion. So if scientism is true, then it's impossible to know that scientism is true, since science wouldn't be able to tell us. Thus it must be the case, if it's true, that it's impossible to know anything. So it must be the case that it is, in fact, possible to know things through methods other than science. But if that's true, then scientism is false, anyway. In either case, it's false -- false because it is self-refuting.

CoQuickAg, There is no "right" to gay marriage. That's all -- that's the gist of my objection. There it isn't a legitimate civil or natural right to it, nothing in the Constitution mandates it, and there's no compelling public interest to justify it. For a coherent treatment of the metaphysics underlying my worldview, which I cannot describe in the space of a simple comments box, I recommend reading Edward Feser's "Aquinas." "Hatred" or "fear" of homosexuality has nothing to do with it (hence the second sentence in the above blockquote). My point in that earlier post was that *even if it did*, the liberal argument against it is incoherent and internally inconsistent.

"Which prompted the all-too-familiar mocking question: 'Why dosen't [sic] your 'god' put a stop to it?'" All too familiar indeed. Calls to mind, say, Matthew 27:38-43.

The amazing thing about the movie is that providing a balanced depiction of medieval Christendom was far from the producers' (Euroleftists all) intentions. It's pretty much the exact opposite of the normal Hollywood fare, in which they try to create a realistic and likable character who instead falls flat; here, they were trying to make a caricatural one-dimension zealot in Ulrich and instead, entirely by accident, produced this fascinating Byronic hero, simultaneously attractively noble and revoltingly cruel.

Speech? Certainly political expression, at least usually; that's why people burn flags after all. I don't see that that matters. Of course a Constitutional amendment explicitly vesting Congress with the power to regulate the desecration of the national flag cannot really be expanded beyond desecration of the national flag except by gross judicial overreach, from which we're not safe with or without such an amendment. Would a devoutly Christian society prohibit the desecration of the books of false religions?

"The process seems to be a slippery-slope, unstoppable once started - until it destroys the society; for reasons I have tried to analyse in my forthcoming book (in relation to the phenomenon of micro-specialization in science)." Interesting that you bring up science (I have not yet started reading your book) -- the funny thing in reading your response is that what reactionary thought offers (offered) was something very like a theory of everything!