Science is wonderful at doing certain things, like popping warm toast out of my toaster and making heavy objects float and fly. Without science we wouldn't be able to do those things. No wonder that science enjoys a position of high prestige in our society.
But the achievements of science blind many people to the fact that science is a limited tool for understanding ourselves and the world. In some areas science has showed astounding progress, but in other areas science has taught us no more than we knew since the time of the Babylonians.
Consider some of the most important questions facing us as human beings: Why are we here? Where ultimately did we come from? Where are we going? Science can provide us with very limited answers. As the philosopher Wittgenstein once put it, one has the feeling that even if all possible scientific knowledge could been obtained, the biggest questions of life would remain largely untouched and unanswered.
Skepticism is of course a central tool of science, but many skeptics make the mistake of failing to apply skepticism to science itself. They are skeptical within science but they are not skeptical about science. They naively believe that science can answer all the questions that require answers. Thus they demand of science what science has never provided and is not likely to provide in the future.
I call this the "atheism of the gaps." The basic idea is that if science hasn't figured something out, just wait a few years, because the brilliant scientists are working on it. Have faith that they will come up with good answers in the future, just as they have in the past. In other words, we should assume that people who are smart enough to make toasters are also smart enough to figure out whether there is life after death.
Yes, it's laughable, and that's why I'm sorry to see smart fellows like my friend Michael Shermer succumbing to this science-worship. Shermer is the editor of Skeptic magazine and author of some fine books including most recently The Mind of the Market. We've done several God v. atheism debates, the most recent one before 2,500 people at Fresno State University. It was one of our liveliest, and you can watch that debate here.
Shermer used to be a Christian fundamentalist. He always gets off a funny line about how he used to go door to door handing out literature, and now as an atheist he wants to go back to those people and take back the stuff he gave them. In a way, though, Shermer remains a believer. He still places his faith in men in white robes. Only these men happen to work not in pulpits but in laboratories. Science is now Shermer's religion.
In a couple of my debates, I asked Shermer what kind of scientific evidence he would require to be convinced that God exists. I asked him, "What if we discovered a new planet tomorrow and emblazed on it were the words: YAHWEH MADE THIS. Would you then believe that there is a God?" Shermer said no. He would automatically conclude that some chance combination of chemicals must have generated those words. In short, he is closed to supernatural explanations, no matter what the data, and is only open to natural explanations.
This I consider a selective sort of skepticism that is actually a lamentable sort of dogmatism. I see it also in Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and Dennett. In a way they are much narrower than religious believers. That's because the religious believer admits both natural and supernatural explanations. By contrast, these unbelievers have closed themselves off to all possibilities that don't fit their naturalistic outlook. One may say that science has blinded them to the things that science cannot possibly tell them.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 61)
1. DoubleD, faith is more important than fact for you. Is it a necessity for man to place himself in a religious frame to justify ones own existence?
JefFlyingV at 7:18PM on Jun 8th 2008
2. Your site is very difficult to navigate. Please fix it. Thank you.
When a new page is starting there is no acknowledgement from your system, and when one becomes aware of a new page the only way I have found to access it is to go back to the master page, and then most recent.
Jerry Brown at 7:34PM on Jun 8th 2008
3. D'Souza says, "But the achievements of science blind many people to the fact that science is a limited tool for understanding ourselves and the world."
Bullshit!
not-pboyfloyd at 7:45PM on Jun 8th 2008
4. Dinesh makes three points.
First: that science can not answer fundamental questions of humanity. He is mistaken. Science can, and has, demonstrated concise and precise reasons for our existance. We are here due to nothing more than the fortunate outcome of laws of physics and evolutionary legacy. We exist to perpetuate that legacy. When we die we are nothing but decomposing protiens and the record of our existance; a memory that is doomed to slow erasure by the inevitable passage of time. And all our art, our literature, our entertainment, even our religion is a desperate and fanatic attempt to inject some artificial meaning or purpose into an existance that is, alone, incapable of meaning. Thus, it is not that science is incapable of answering. Is it simply that dinesh does not like the answer, and so grasps at straws in the desperate interest of having some kind of important in a universe utterly indifferent to our existance.
The second point Dinesh attempts is the argument that religion and faith are capable of answering these questions to greater satisfaction. I suppose that, were I dying of cancer, some doctors might feel it better to lie to me out of the kindness of their hearts and tell me that I am well. A good intention to be sure. Religion, faith, these are simply more good intentioned lies. There is no faith that is true that can not have its truthliness challenged by another faith or story or myth or superstition. They are all unprovable. All manufactured in that frantic scramble for some artificial universal importance. A hysterical insistance that our solitary planet, out of quintillions and more in the universe, is some how favored and prefered over all others. It is a pitiful hubris, an emperor insisting that not only is it wearing clothes but that you should wear a pair yourself.
The final point that Dinesh makes is a valid question. What level of scientific evidence would be needed to prove the existance of such a being? To be honest, there is no scientific critiera I can imagine to apply to such a question. Neither religion nor metaphysics nor physics can conclusively define things such as what God is. Is God matter? Energy? Some other state of existance unknown? Quantum? Sub quantum? And if God is such an esoteric and alien being then why is it that such a being needs or cares about human endevors and behaviors? Is eating fish on friday really so vital to such a trancendental creature? Is there any logical explaination for why rabbits are an abomination to it? These are questions that need to be presented by thesists inorder for them to even be applicable to science. If you presume God to exist then you should be able to posit some testable traits of such a being. If you can not, it is not a failure of science. It is nothing more then the failing of your manufactured mythology unable to hold up to the cold and callous truth of the universe.
Somber at 7:45PM on Jun 8th 2008
5. D'Souza goes on, "In some areas science has showed astounding progress, but in other areas science has taught us no more than we knew since the time of the Babylonians."
Here we have some very profound sounding bullshit!
not-pboyfloyd at 7:46PM on Jun 8th 2008
6. For some reason, beyond reasonable understanding, you say those who believe in magic are way ahead of those who believe in facts plus maybe magic. Hard to understand you type of thinking. . Your religious outlook seems to be little more that hyper imagination. What proof have you for any of your beliefs that challenge the knowledge of mankind? Science may be slow but it appears way ahead of what you have to offer from you imaginary ideas you say you have placed your faith in. What do you really offer to man kind other than bad mouth what science has discovered???? I have seen little you have to offer except trying to run down one person or another on any of your blog statements. Pray tell how does that advance our living situation as we do life on planet earth?????
Jerry Brown at 7:59PM on Jun 8th 2008
7. “In a couple of my debates, I asked Shermer what kind of scientific evidence he would require to be convinced that God exists. I asked him, "What if we discovered a new planet tomorrow and emblazed on it were the words: YAHWEH MADE THIS. Would you then believe that there is a God?" Shermer said no. He would automatically conclude that some chance combination of chemicals must have generated those words. In short, he is closed to supernatural explanations, no matter what the data, and is only open to natural explanations.”
Hey Douche bag How about some highly advanced aliens with a penchant for practical jokes just fucking with us?
rabidmccain at 8:00PM on Jun 8th 2008
8. Thank you Somber!!! You knocked him out
with only 3 (rhetorical)punches!!
What are the chances of you joining
the list of DD's Debate Buddies ?
BOB JOHNSON at 8:02PM on Jun 8th 2008
9. ....Highly intellectual bullshit!!!!
BOB JOHNSON at 8:04PM on Jun 8th 2008
10. D'Souza set up an arbitrary standard for 'science' to 'try to answer' with, "Consider some of the most important questions facing us as human beings: Why are we here? Where ultimately did we come from? Where are we going?"
Asking 'Why?' of a scientist is asking 'How is it that...?'.
D'Souza, and everyone else is 'here' because of gravity.
We are all circling the Sun.(Scientists and others like to call the time it takes to complete one full cycle, a 'year'[write that down])
Everyone is going to die, eventually.
Oh, yea, but D'Souza is not asking these as science questions, is he?
So, these are non-scientific bullshit questions!
not-pboyfloyd at 8:05PM on Jun 8th 2008
11. Incidently... if I were to come across a planet with the words "Yaweh made this..." carved in it I would find it not only suspitious that it was written at all... but that it was written in english.
But let me give the inverse question. If one searched every single planet in the known universe and did not find on any of them a sign saying they were written by Yaweh would you conclude then that God did not exist? Or would you promote the argument that God is simply too elusive to ever tag planets in such a manner?
Somber at 8:17PM on Jun 8th 2008
12. DD is just disappointed that science has not yet found his imaginary friend despite years of research
BOB JOHNSON at 8:20PM on Jun 8th 2008
13. God as a covert tagger...
Now that would be a miracle!!!
Bob Johnson at 8:24PM on Jun 8th 2008
14. D'Souza says, "Science can provide us with very limited answers."
They are not 'limited' answers, they are scientific answers!
He drools on, "As the philosopher Wittgenstein once put it, one has the feeling that even if all possible scientific knowledge could been obtained, the biggest questions of life would remain largely untouched and unanswered."
Well that is just a philosophical guess by Wittgenstein, isn't it? Perhaps if all possible scientific knowledge could be obtained then the 'biggest questions' might become moot!
not-pboyfloyd at 8:24PM on Jun 8th 2008
15. "Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." -Aldous Huxley
D'Souza, you're in good company...
Jesse at 8:27PM on Jun 8th 2008