I think I have talked about two levels of reality - Absolute and Pragmatic. I and my problems (there are not many, and they are under control) exist in the Pragmatic mode. Do not mix up the two levels of reality. In the Absolute mode there is nothing other than Brahman. We too do all that which you are talking about in the pragmatic mode. But you do not know about the Absolute mode. Let us be happy where we are. And if you think that Christians are wiser than Hindus, I would not deny you that pleasure. I am not that puffed about egos.
A major problem with your position is that you claim that "science" is your final authority. A final authority is that source of truth to which there is no more ultimate appeal.
You offered as a definition of science from Wikipedia as: "To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." Further from the Oxford Dictionaries Online: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses". Experiments need to be designed to test hypotheses. Experiments are an important tool of the scientific method."
What you did not include:
"The method is a continuous process that begins with observations about the natural world...The best hypotheses lead to predictions that can be tested in various ways. The strongest tests of hypotheses come from carefully controlled experiments that gather empirical data"
"The process of the scientific method involves making
conjectures (hypotheses), deriving predictions from them as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments based on those predictions. A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on knowledge obtained while seeking answers to the question. The hypothesis might be very specific, or it might be broad. Scientists then test hypotheses by conducting experiments. A scientific hypothesis must be
falsifiable, implying that it is possible to identify a possible outcome of an experiment that conflicts with predictions deduced from the hypothesis; otherwise, the hypothesis cannot be meaningfully tested."
"The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether
observations agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from a hypothesis. Experiments can take place anywhere from a college lab to CERN's
Large Hadron Collider. There are difficulties in a formulaic statement of method, however. Though the scientific method is often presented as a fixed sequence of steps, it represents rather a set of general principles"
" Some philosophers and scientists have argued that there is no scientific method; they include physicist
Lee Smolin and philosopher
Paul Feyerabend (in his
Against Method). Nola and Sankey[
who?] remark that "For some, the whole idea of a theory of scientific method is yester-year's debate"
You also assert: " I am just saying that I rely on scientific research rather than on philosophical debate. Philosophy has taken us as far as it could, but it cannot go any farther. The frontiers of new knowledge can be breached only by science now."
Is this a philosophical statement that you are relying on about a universal assertion rather than science that can be observed (with the eyes), and tested in the natural world by science?
Obviously your universal assertion stated here is not so universal after all. It is a fallacious statement. Therefore self-defeating and self-contradictory.
You state: "Yeah, according to one stream of thought in Hinduism that I follow (Advaita, non-duality), we ourselves are illusions like the illusory world/universe that we seem to live in, a sort of matrix. And knowledge and science are the only way out of it."
If "knowledge and science are the only way out of it" then they are in it and also "are illusions" and are therefore no way out of it. Self-defeating and self-contradictory.
You repeatedly confess to science as being your ultimate authority. And yet your ultimate authority fails at the very outset of your argument.
Can science, your final standard of truth, by "systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses" justify your ultimate standard of truth as true?
Can you observe, by your five senses, that " In the Absolute mode there is nothing other than Brahman."?
You deny absolute, governing laws and yet embrace an absolute mode. In that "mode" are the no guiding, binding, unchanging principles? If yes then you are self-contradictory. If no then you have no meaning or purpose.
You say this pragmatic world in which you live is just an illusion.
Then that statement is an illusion, it is not real. Therefore if that statement is not real then all things are not illusions.
Finally, because science is your final standard to which you hold as the ultimate authority of whatever is true, and this standard, by the very definition you supplied: "a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning", your worldview, with all of your arguments defending it, falls flat on its face.
Science cannot "observe, measure, experiment in a lab, or test" that science is the final authority of truth for anyone.
Your ultimate standard of truth cannot "derive(ing) predictions from them as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments based on those predictions." Your hypothesis is that in the "Absolute mode there is nothing other than Brahman." Because of the absolutely required: "systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses". Experiments need to be designed to test hypotheses. Experiments are an important tool of the scientific method.", there is absolutely no "empirical data" verifying such a "mode" as "Brahman".
Because knowledge is justified, true belief, your worldview is self-defeating, self-contradictory, incoherent, impossible to live out (even in this "pragmatic existence"). You cannot justify your belief system by your final standard of truth. Therefore you must stand on the foundation of the Christian worldview to live your life, though unwittingly, because only the Christian worldview accounts for those very Laws, which you irrationally deny, that science must depend on for its investigation.
Science investigation of data requires:
"deriving predictions from them as logical consequences" Requiring the Laws of Logic.
"observations about the natural world" Requiring the Uniformity and Laws of Nature.
Your worldview fails because it defeats its own beliefs
