> By your standards nobody can offer any piece of insight.

You are welcome to offer your opinions, and where I believe them to be incorrect, I make note of it. It seems to me that you've done a fair amount of that yourself in this conversation, although with a distinctly different level of quality imho.

> I admitted that there is a fair bit of generalization going on with me, but your requirement of being infinitely exhaustive is not exactly how you create knowledge either.

Third party observers may now have some greater insight into how actually true the "true" stories people tell about their religious beliefs (The Science, in this case).

Besides: laughing at Christians and religious people in general seems to have become a bit of a sport on the internet (including often here on HN), I think it is fair that Scientific Materialists get ribbed a little for their bizarre beliefs now and then. Jesus you people are sensitive - grow a sense of humour ffs!!

> I don't have to fall off from every bicycle on Earth to know that it hurts.

Figures of speech and rhetoric are a double edged sword, and they are also not very scientific.

> We are doing everything wrong to a substantial degree, ever since the industrial revolution, destroying the biosphere of the only planet we have. We are evolved to thrive in a specific environment, and we are ruining it. How science is being used is very often questionable, just think of the Nazis or the Russians....

Ah yes, of course: those other people. What about us? What about the scientists who brought forth these powerful but dangerous tools.

If scientists are so smart, and are the sole source of knowledge on the planet, why don't they lead us out of the mess they've so substantially contributed to getting us into?

> ...but this only makes the case of the usefulness of science to all problem spaces stronger.

Perhaps, if you ignore the role science played in creating the problem in the first place.

> We are also talking right now because of science.

In part, but not entirely because of science.

>> There is not database of all shamans

> I will keep choosing doctors for my medical needs. I haven't tried all the doctors or any of the shamans, and yet I still know that a doctor is the right choice....

For all people, for all ailments, without exception?

Also: is it safe to presume that you are using the word "know" (as opposed to believe) colloquially?

> ...even though there are incompetent doctors, even serial killer doctors out there. You can tell why, right?

For the vast majority of ailments, a doctor is the superior choice.

Question: would you mind commenting on these two points from my prior message (for the second, I'm interested if you think you could execute the technique, literally):

> One might think that a "scientific thinker" (or, an arbitrary user on Hacker News) would immediately realize the fundamental logical flaw in such a claim, but as the saying goes: "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine".

> Here I will try an experimental technique: are you able to, within your mind, take a strictly third person perspective on this conversation...can you imagine yourself rising into the air, and the higher you go your mental "connection" to this reality (and yourself as a person living within that reality) gradually separates, until eventually you reach an altitude where you no longer have any connection to yourself or this conversation...as if you had come upon it randomly, rather than being an active participant in it. From this perspective, are you able to see and appreciate the substantial silliness, "the folly of humans" you might say, that is going on here? And thinking more broadly: is this phenomenon not true of a substantial majority of arguments that take place on this planet?