Thread: Are feelings and intuitions a valid source of knowledge?

Originally Posted by JoannaB

Except that I am also not comfortable with your definition of factual and of truth, or rather for me the statement that I do not believe that God is part of factual truth implies I do not really believe that God exists, and I very much do believe he exists.

What does factual verifiable truth have to do with belief?

Ok then, if you insist, I'll further refine the terminology - what you call knowledge in relation to the spiritual and religious realm is not verifiable by other people and also cannot be demonstrated to be true.

Here's what an intuition is - it's an idea that occurs to you and you don't know the source of it. If that idea is in relation to something spiritual or religious, it cannot be verified to be true in any concrete sense, so essentially you receive an idea that could have come from a divine or spiritual source or it could come from some part of your own mind, including the irrational unconscious, and you must simply decide whether you think it's true or not. The best a person can do as far as I can tell with that kind of intuition is to say "It just feels really true to me". And I don't see why any more than that is necessary?

And while I totally understand that feelings and intuitions are extremely important to you, nonetheless as we've been discussing, they lack any concrete factual basis that can be verified or demonstrated to be true. What would verifiable truth even mean in relation to a being who himself has no verifiable aspects? God is utterly beyond the reach of our knowledge. I don't see how it would be even possible for any intuition about him to be verifiable in any way - it makes no sense.

I made a thread last night where I discussed my own thoughts about the nature of God. I did believe in him at one time, and even then, I did not try to say that my thoughts about him were in some way factually true or verifiable. As I said there, and as you agreed, it's all about faith. I don't see any reason to pretend like it's anything other than that. Why must you try to find a basis in concrete objective fact? I never felt like I needed any such basis when I believed. All I needed was the belief itself.