In religious debates, scientific arguments are sometimes considered inappropriate because their use implies applying methods and criteria designed for the empirical study of the world rather than for discerning the essential, spiritual truths of religion.

The Clash Between Empirical and Spiritual Approaches

In religious debates, scientific arguments are sometimes considered inappropriate because their use implies applying methods and criteria designed for the empirical study of the world rather than for discerning the essential, spiritual truths of religion. Discussions about religious matters involve issues of faith, revelation, and spiritual experience that do not lend themselves to experimental verification. Thus, shifting to the use of scientific data in a context dominated by faith and tradition may be seen as an attempt to reduce profound spiritual matters to the narrow framework of scientific thinking.

For example, one source states:
"Scientific objections to religion can only indicate a complete misunderstanding of the essence of religion and a complete misunderstanding of the nature of scientific methods and the subject matter of science. ... To treat [sacred texts] as self-validating and to apply to them concepts and criteria borrowed from entirely unrelated fields is not to resolve the question, but to eliminate it altogether." (source: link txt)

Another source emphasizes the distinction between approaches by noting that issues that cannot be subjected to laboratory testing require reliance on a different kind of experience:
"For their reality is not related to the realm of faith, but to the domain of science... Yet the very source of any belief does not stem so much from material experience as from a spiritual, inner experience that arises from a certain vision of the world." (source: link txt)

Thus, the use of scientific arguments in a religious context can be seen as an attempt to apply methods that do not correspond to the nature of religious knowledge, leading such arguments to be perceived as inappropriate or even as distorting the essence of the issues under discussion.

Supporting citation(s):
"Scientific objections to religion can only indicate a complete misunderstanding of the essence of religion and a complete misunderstanding of the nature of scientific methods and the subject matter of science. ... To treat them as self-validating and to apply to them concepts and criteria borrowed from entirely unrelated fields is not to resolve the question, but to eliminate it altogether." (source: link txt)

"For their reality is not related to the realm of faith, but to the domain of science... Yet the very source of any belief does not stem so much from material experience as from a spiritual, inner experience that arises from a certain vision of the world." (source: link txt)