Eric wrote:Analysis as you state is something one does in one's head and I agree. When one seeks God with all their means, heart (aka inner feelings) soul and mind, God will not fail to provide them with knowledge.
Many people who seek god find something. They go to India and find divine awakening. They go to Mecca and find enlightenment. They fall on their knees and pray and find forgiveness. But what exactly do they find? If you start off with a conclusion, you will often find it. Unless you take precautions that will help you analyze the results, you won't really know what you have found. Things we find within ourselves
have no necessary connection to the world outside us. It could easily be a load of hogwash, but because you have a conclusion that you are seeking--you are after all seeking god, so you know where you want to go--, you may have no ability to see anything but that conclusion.
All knowledge of the world comes to us through those ugly senses with which we experience the world and that includes possible knowledge of god. What we see with our eyes. What we hear. That is the only way we get information about the world outside. If we read books we are getting coded or elaborated information which we unpack the best we can through our learning, which shapes our understanding. The knowledge we get from books is purely theoretical. Its relation to the world needs to be established through experience, ie interaction with the world, interaction that you are able to repeat and verify through others repeating it.
What makes you think a priori that there is a god? The idea goes against all means we have of knowing anything. How do you
test the existence of this god? This is an important question, for, if you cannot test the information, then you don't have any knowledge. We must avoid elaborate means of testing that come down to rigging the results to reflect the desired conclusion. Remember, if you really want to find something you probably will. Obviously the safest way to test results is to demonstrate them to someone else or vice versa. If you cannot convincingly test your conclusion then you don't have knowledge.
Eric wrote:It is God who is our creator, thus the very foundation of knowledge.
I don't believe that you have any means to test that fact. There is no knowledge in it. It is a leap of faith and such a leap has nothing to do with knowledge. So, how do you test the proposition that god is the foundation of knowledge without first having a way to test the existence of god sufficiently to know that god exists?
Eric wrote:Prayer and meditation is a means to commune with God and to hear His/Her voice in guidance to our understanding. It is through faith in which we act upon this guidance.
None of these things suggest avenues to any sort of knowledge, do they? There is no way for you to verify the information. The voices that you think are guiding you may simply be paranoia and how would you know, if you cannot test the results? Prayer is something you do purely in your head. What has that to do with knowledge? If you talk to god and you don't get a response through the only means that you are sure of that connects you to the world outside, ie your eyes and ears, you cannot tell if that response has any connection with the real world, any validity or not.
Meditation is another thing that happens solely within your head. How can things that happen solely within your head bring you knowledge? Knowledge comes with testability. Not mental agility. All you know about the world comes through your senses.
There is a lot more that comes through your senses as well: stories, lies, opinions, propaganda, illusions, tricks of the light and so on. Your knowledge comes from outside you in such a way that, through objective testing, you can be convinced. Information that you hold to be true without testing it is called faith. We take a lot of things on faith. It makes living simpler. We can't go around testing everything for we wouldn't have time to enjoy living.
But isn't this god business important? Shouldn't we be able to test our information about god to see if it really is knowledge? The tools you've talked about, prayer and meditation, don't seem to provide any avenues to reach knowledge, because they don't deal objectively with real world information. But let's not forget the devious message that we should not test god: without being able to test the validity of the information about god all further information pertaining to this god is irrelevant.
If you can't test the existence of god then you cannot know god exists. Before talking about god as our creator, you have to talk about god and his existence. How do you do that when you don't seem to have the tools to test your information. And I don't see any significance in you being able to convince yourself through prayer and meditation. People are very good at conning themselves. Surely, you need to do better.
My initial question was "How do you get knowledge of the world and how do you test that knowledge?" The methods you have for getting knowledge of the world seem to be few and your proposals for alternatives don't seem to me to be able to deal with what you need to. If you disagree with this, how do you think prayer and meditation can help you reach
knowledge? Hopefully, you can see that the getting of knowledge involves the conversion of real world information through testing. How would you test the proposition that god is real? ie how can you obtain the knowledge that god exists? That's step one.