I have made it clear that religious truth comes to humans in an unknown way; in a manner that science cannot prove or disprove. For the individual receiving the knowledge, the evidence is clearly there. For every other atheistic knuckledragger demanding "proof" that someone received a legitimate religious experience, there is nothing science can do to help him out since science has not caught up yet. Science tells us barely anything about the human conscience. This is a fact that most rambling atheists don't even realize.
As an atheist whose knuckles usually remain wholly unbruised during normal locomotion, my attitude is as follows. I really don't mind how religious people choose to make their life decisions, so long as:
1. They do not harm others by those decisions.
2. They do not damage themselves so much by those decisions that the rest of us have to pay to pick up the pieces.
3. They do not attempt to coerce others into living their lives according to their personal religious prescriptions.
4. They don't bore or embarrass me by going on and on about the beautiful messages they are getting from the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whether these messages come through a little voice in their head, the warm fuzzies, dreams, waking visions, scripture reading, planchette writing, or reading tea-leaves. Whatever. So long as it makes them happy and keeps them off the streets at night.
However, if they do want to bring the results of the communications received under (4) into the public domain, and ask that the rest of the community (who may not all be Pastafarians or whatever) use the content of those communications to decide whether, for instance, women should have access to effective contraceptive advice if they want it, then my attitude is different. If they want what they may call their 'religious knowledge' to have public effects, then the rest of us are entitled to ask for a public means of checking on the truth-value of their alleged knowledge. You see, suppose I say:
"Providing free contraceptive advice is good because it enables women to plan their families to a size that their family incomes can feed and educate"
Or
"Providing free contraceptive advice is bad because it leads to the exploitation of young girls by men who want to have consequence-free sex"
(I deliberately choose two opposite examples, since my point is the same whether I oppose or support free contraceptive advice)
then if an opponent demands that I justify that belief, I should be able to refer to objective, publicly verifiable and repeatable survey data to back up my claims. But if on the other hand someone quotes the Monty Python scripture that says:
"Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great/ If a sperm is wasted. God gets quite irate"
and on that basis opposes the provision of contraceptive advice, then such a claim is by its nature incapable of being publicy verified by those lacking the religious commitments of the person who made it.
To that extent, I suggest that 'religious knowledge' is not a persuasive basis for common decisions outside the community of those who are prepared to assent to that knowledge. Whereas other kinds of knowledge - including the kinds we call 'scientific' knowledge, are. That is an important distinction, and it is reasonable to insist on it being made.