Religion
In reply to the discussion: "Other ways of knowing," aka Different Cognitive Styles [View all]Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Romney knows he is going to win the election.
Phelps knows god hates fags.
RMoney's belief can be tested by falsification. If Romney does not win the election his belief is false. We conducted that experiment. It was false. Romney had false knowledge of the real world, a theory that could be tested.
We can't test Phelps belief because it is entirely outside of the real world. Phelp's claim that god hates fags is simply an opinion without evidence, and with no possibility of being tested. His claim is no different than all the other claims about god, for example "god loves all of us". We'd prefer the latter to be true (unless you are in the phelps clan), but there is no rational way to judge either of these claims as true or false. We can make real world assertions about these beliefs, for example "society would be better if more people believed that god loves us all than believed that god hates fags", and as those assertions are about the real world they could be tested for validity. But the underlying claims are not.