September 26, 2012

Scientism

BTW, vote YES for Prop 37
Scientism: a belief that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth via the scientific method.

Science: The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world.

I wanted to point to this term, and article, for the future, as it will be valuable to point this out. So many Atheists are afflicted with this horrible debilitating belief.

"Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientifc worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth." ~PBS.org

“Scientism claims to be ‘reality based’ but that is precisely what it is not. It recognizes only aspects of reality, and in particular only those susceptible of study via its favored methods. When those methods fail to capture some aspect of reality – God, consciousness, intentionality, free will, selfhood, moral value, and so on – scientism tends to blame reality rather than its methods, and to insist that the reality either be redefined so as to make it compatible with its methods, or eliminated entirely.” ~Ed Feser

"Will Science Disprove God's Existence? No. Written by James Heiser 

 Over the past few centuries, the purported efforts of scientists to come to a better understanding of the natural world have often led to wild variations in their theories. Attempts to arrive at a naturalistic understanding of the origin of the universe — operating with the presupposition of excluding a divine origin — have led to a profound divergence of opinion, with only one common point among those who have created such theories: However the universe came into existence, God did not create it.

As explained in my recent book, A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven, the efforts of scientists to disprove the existence of God is not a pursuit of Science, but Scientism. Since Rene Descartes (1596–1650) there have been men and women who have succumbed to Descartes’ egocentric presentation of the scientist as the master of all knowledge; in the words of Michael Gillespie: “The scientist therefore will be the master not of [a] single area of knowledge but of all knowledge. His knowledge will be a mathêsis universalis, a universal science or universal mathematics. He will thus be not merely the wisest human being but also the best technician and the best lawgiver in both political the [sic] theological matters.” This worldview is often called “Scientism” — a materialistic doctrine that (among other tenets of its creed) axiomatically excludes the possibility of a non-naturalistic origin of the universe, and which interprets all observation data regarding the natural realm only in line with its axiomatic assumption that there is no divine origin to creation.

At the root of such delusional attempts to disprove the divine creation of the universe is an inherent contradiction: attempting to prove that God did not create the universe, the Scientistic theorist assumes the truth of that which he purports to attempt to prove. Theorizing based on the assumption there is no God, the “discovery” that one’s theorizing does not lead to the discovery of God is hardly a shocking result..." [Read More]


bit.ly/DAScientism