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Scientism, Atheism and Religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScientismScientism is a term used to refer to belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints. It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society."
"According to the most usual definition, an atheist is a person who maintains that there is no God, that is, that the sentence "God exists" expresses a false proposition." - Paul Edwards in Encyclopedia of Philosophy Volume I page 175
"Atheism is the view that there is no God." - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://www.iep.utm.edu/atheism/
" 'Atheism' means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/
"Atheism is ostensibly the doctrine that there is no God." -- Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2005)
"Atheism (from Greek: a + theos + ismos "not believing in god") refers in its broadest sense to a denial of theism (the belief in the existence of a single deity or deities)."- New World Encyclopedia
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/atheism
Atheism: a + theos, denying god, (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology-1966).
Atheism: all are coined words from the Greek atheos, denying the gods, a word introduced into the Latin by Cicero in the form; atheos, a-, negative, prefix, and theos, a god, (Etymological Dictionary of English Language-1958).
Atheism doesn’t propose anything in principle aside from the inexistence of God, atheism in principle has nothing to do with science or general skepticism, one could be an atheist and believe in ghosts or astrology, or one could be an atheist and think the scientific method is useless, for example, what characterizes atheism is simply the negative assertion about God’s existence. But it seems that in the mind of many people science reinforces that atheism is true. And when you get to hear them it very often seems that the underlying base for this idea is scientism, since the Abrahamic God cannot be tested like a scientific hypotheses, this should suffice to deem theism as false or at least irrational. The problem with this idea is that it is false.
Showing that a belief is not scientific does nothing to show it is false, nor that it is irrational. We recognize many sorts of knowledges that are unscientific.
In this video Ian Hutchinson, Prof. of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about scientism and religion.
He gives examples of things that are not scientific be we are rational to accept, History, Ethics, Sociology, Jurisprudence, etc...
Here Craig (Christian) debates Atkins (atheist), who claims that science is omnipotent, this still looks new to me, seeing an actual scientist who lectured at a respected college saying something like this.
And Craig gives 5 examples of things are rational but unscientific:
1) Logical and Mathematical truths
2) Metaphysicial truths
3) Ethical beliefs
4) Aesthetical Judgements
5) Science itself
Scientism itself is unscientific. Scientism tells us that we should not believe any proposition that cannot be scientifically proven. But science cannot prove that “we should not believe any proposition that cannot be scientifically proven”? It cannot itself be scientifically proven. Therefore we should not believe it. Scientism thus defeats itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScientismPhilosopher of religion Keith Ward has said scientism is philosophically inconsistent or even self-refuting, as the truth of the statements "no statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically (or logically)" or "no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true" cannot themselves be proven scientifically, logically, or empirically
Ian Hutchinson about the new atheists:
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PS...Hutchinson.pdfCertainly it is incumbent upon Christians
to point out, forcefully if need be, when scientists
or others turn the success of science
into advocacy for materialism or atheism.
For example, when the inability of science to
detect purpose in nature is interpreted as a
proof that the universe is purposeless, rather
than an obvious consequence of science ruling
out purpose from its methodology right
at the beginning. What needs to be opposed
is bad logic; it is not science but scientism:
the unjustified belief that all useful knowledge
is science.
Francis Collins on science and religion:
Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland.
Before being appointed Director of NIH, Collins led the HGP and other pioneering genomics research initiatives as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of NIH's 27 institutes and centers. Before joining NHGRI, he earned a reputation as an innovative gene hunter at the University of Michigan. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.
Collins also has written a number of books on science, medicine, and spirituality, including the New York Times bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.
After leaving the helm of NHGRI and before becoming Director of NIH, he founded and served as president of the BioLogos Foundation, which promotes discourse on the relationship between science and religion and advocates the perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
It's really circular reasoning in the end. They start defining justified beliefs within a scope, then reject things outside this scope as irrational, but no argument can be given as to why only beliefs within that very specific scope are justified beliefs.
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Originally Posted by Fryma
Atheism
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