"Other ways of knowing," aka Different Cognitive Styles

[Deep13]

111. Well that may be true...

...although I disagree about scientific language. It very much is meant to be taken literally. The whole point is that experimental results are not open to interpretation. Alive mouse equals one result. Dead mouse equals a different result. Larger theoretical models are built on those results and are tested to see if they are in fact accurate descriptions of reality. Sometimes, what is being tested cannot be reduced to laboratory conditions--pretty hard to build a neutron star in a laboratory--so other tests need to be devised to eliminate possible explanations. Granted, explanations for non-scientists are often reduced to analogies or superficial explanations that cannot be taken literally, but that's only because most of us are scientifically illiterate.

Anyway, what you say is all well and good, but what does it have to do with divinity? If it is all interpretive, then it can really mean anything the practitioner wants it to mean, which again raises the probability of confirmation bias and other other shortcomings in human perception.

If a Creator made the universe as claimed by the other poster who responded, then there is a deity that is separate from nature. If true that is a basic fact of the universe that is either true or false. And if true, then it is a religion. In any event, supernatural is not by any means an exclusively "western" concept, however you define that. The Christianity had its origins as a Jewish heresy in the Middle East. Judaism and Islam are both Middle Eastern in origin. Animism is certainly supernatural, envisioning a spirit world where natural spirits and ancestors dwell. The various versions of Hinduism and Buddhism also envision incorporeal deities living in a supernatural realm.