Empirical Religion

A belief system that elevates “experience” in a narrow sense—usually sensory observation, measurement, or experiment—into the sole legitimate source of knowledge. Empirical religion treats whatever cannot be directly observed as unreal or meaningless. It rejects introspection, rational intuition, and testimony as unreliable, while ignoring that its own empirical foundations rest on unprovable assumptions (e.g., that the future resembles the past). It is often accompanied by a hostility to theory and abstraction, mistaking “just the facts” for a coherent philosophy.

Example: “He demanded to see a particle to believe in it, but accepted statistical models as ‘empirical’ without question—empirical religion, confusing a particular method with reality itself.”

Empirical Religion by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal April 16, 2026