Although this view of religion may be an accurate description of exoteric religion, it overlooks esoteric dimensions of religion and ignores the possibility of a spiritual science that, like physical science, is based on experimental verification. The fundamental principle of any science, whether spiritual or physical, is the requirement that propositions be subject to independent experimental verification by trained practitioners. Science in the domain of the physical is physical science, and science in the domain of the spiritual is sacred science. In contrast to science, dogmatism makes claims to truth without requiring that they be subject to experimental verification, or even denying that experimental verification is possible. Dogmatism in the sphere of the spiritual is dogmatic religion, and dogmatism in the sphere of the physical is scientism.
Dogmatic religion is characterized by the denial of direct spiritual knowledge.
As a result, religious claims are based on a scripture whose ultimate validity can never be known. Ironically, the denial of the possibility of spiritual knowledge by dogmatic religions is contradicted by the very mystics who founded them. These mystics have all testified that there is, indeed, a faculty of spiritual knowledge that can be awakened. The unanimous witness of the sages and the saints, over the whole surface of the globe and throughout the ages, is a sign or a criterion which no man of good faith can despise. It asserts that the only true source of knowledge or experimental verification is the physical senses.