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 2 of 61)
16. Bob Johnson -- I knew a teacher named Bob Johnson who was an atheist...
Jesse at 8:29PM on Jun 8th 2008
17. The demonstrable fact is that religious and god-believing people can and do disagree among themselves on every substantive issue that DD now raises. There are questions that currently seem immune to anything other than arbitrary answers, and thus different religious traditions provide very different answers. Such questions also are outside the domain of mainstream science. The only legitimate answer that we currently can give is that we simply do not know. Why is this so intolerable?
Skwunkus at 8:34PM on Jun 8th 2008
18.
Wanna know what else science cannot tell us?
Why Dinesh can't come up with something better!
mac at 8:34PM on Jun 8th 2008
19. DD: "many skeptics make the mistake of failing to apply skepticism to science itself."
All religions fail to apply skepticism to themselves, so therefore they are correct? I wish the religious would hold their religions up to half as much scrutiny as they do everything else. Oh wait, then they wouldn't be religious anymore.
AndrewV at 8:42PM on Jun 8th 2008
20. Mr D'Souza's dismissive distaste for science (it's good for making his toast) may have more to do with science's impatience with the kind of unsupported claims which are the staple of his column than any inherent limits to science. An alternate view of the limits of science is just as likely - In time, science may well answer these questions of origins, but many people won't end up liking, or finding comfort, in the answers.
Steve at 9:09PM on Jun 8th 2008
21. D'Souza says, "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."
That is totally ridiculous. What would scientists be skeptical about if not science?
If D'Souza is simply saying that some scientists are skeptical of religion, then, so what? Many theists are skeptical of science!
I guess Christian readers can be counted on to imagine the drivel leading up to this lie is something more than a straw-man.
Is D'Souza suggesting that Scientists are skeptics who are atheists?
D'Souza, "They naively believe that science can answer all the questions that require answers."
Billions of humans have come and gone not knowing these 'required answers'. What is so 'required' of them?
Is D'Souza setting fire to his straw-man scientist/skeptic/atheist here, preparing to dance around the ashes? (a sacrifice to the gods?)
not-pboyfloyd at 9:15PM on Jun 8th 2008
22. I have a question for Dinesh.
Are there really such things as "God given Rights" or are there merely "inalienable" ones?
I'd like the most scientific answer possible, please.
abbot at 9:25PM on Jun 8th 2008
23. Yep, D'Souza chants, "Thus they demand of science what science has never provided and is not likely to provide in the future.", while he dances round the ashes of the straw-man which he built out of straw and bullshit!
If there are some scientists dedicating their lives to disproving the supernatural then they are looking for a left-handed screw-driver, shopping for a vortex, trying to find some head-light fluid, searching for some elbow grease etc.
not-pboyfloyd at 9:31PM on Jun 8th 2008
24. Jesse,there's a lot of us out there.
I am a bassist/teacher.
I am not an atheist.
I am however,atheist.
All the bass,
BOB JOHNSON at 9:36PM on Jun 8th 2008
25. There is one thing I have taken notice too.
Most atheist do not believe in God simply because when they prayed they did not receive an answer to their prayers.
So they come to the conclusion because God did not answer their prayers then God does not exist.
The fact is this, God will hear and answer your prayers after you are saved/born again. But you can not be saved if you continue in un-belief.
You say you believed, and was a christian but still there was no answer to your prayers.
This proves one thing you were not a christian.
There is more to being saved /born again than saying you believe and accept Christ as your saviour.
Man can not acomplish this on his own. God must first draw you to his son by his spirit. When this happens there is a Godly sorrow that sets up in your heart, and helps you to repent of your sins.
Then God gives you the faith to believe, and suddenly the miracle of spiritual life takes place in your soul, and at this point you then know for sure That God is real, and he does in fact answer prayers.
I know many people who have prayed, and God swiftly answered their prayers.
God does not answer the prayers of lost people until after they are saved.
The first prayer he will answer is the prayer of repentence for salvation by Grace.
Never assume God does not exist because your prayers went un-answered.
Observant at 9:42PM on Jun 8th 2008
26. DD says:
"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."
I disagree entirely.
Science can show us how the universe began, how matter coalesced, and how life began from non-life (even though you may not want to see it).
It can show us where we get our ethics and morality, as in anthropology, game theory and evolutionary psychology.
It can show us what happens to our bodies and our "life force" when we die. It can even search for a spirit (but so far has not found one).
Science can show us the weather next week, and where our universe is heading in 5 billion years or more!
Of course science has not given us all the answers to every question under the sun, but even the small percentage of reality it has uncovered is FAR better than anything religion has given us in thousands of years!
Note: If I were to instead follow religion for guidance on such matters I might be stoning homosexuals and going to the witch doctor when I have a fever!
DD - Every time I read your work, two words come to mind: Breathtaking Inanity.
SWEJ
aol at 9:44PM on Jun 8th 2008
27. Observant,does that mean all them Jews,Muslims,
Hindu,Budhists,etc.,are in big trouble?
BOB JOHNSON at 9:55PM on Jun 8th 2008
28. Never assume God does not exist because your prayers went un-answered.
Observant
You are such a boor. God does not answer prayer, oh yes he does .you are not answered unless, but he does answered, but if he doesn't, it does not mean he is not there, wait, he does ,but he does not seem to, wait he does answer quickly, no wait he does but you may not know, wait he does but only when it is ........
Jerry Brown at 9:58PM on Jun 8th 2008
29. D'Souza says, "I call this the "atheism of the gaps.""
That is funny because there is no equivalent 'theism of the gaps', it is 'the GOD of the gaps', isn't it?
The equivalent should be 'the no-God of the gaps', and since we haven't found HIM yet, there is no good reason that we might find HIM anywhere other than religion and religious philosophy. But you guys have already found HIM there long ago, didn't you?
You can no longer say that it is God who is making the rain fall, except inasmuchas you believe that God made everything the way that it is. But that last part was the premise of the first part, God controlling the weather, wasn't it?
The possible existence(if you could call it that) of some supernatural prime mover, seems to be little more than an excuse for magical thinkers to believe in their particular brand of magic.
God seems to be able to to anything except convince skeptics that HE exists. We'd still have the free-will to reject HIM on the grounds that we feel that HIS motives are childish, so that is NOT a major problem at all.
not-pboyfloyd at 9:59PM on Jun 8th 2008
30. No, oz never did give nothing to the tin man
That he didnt, didnt already have
And cause never was the reason for the evening
Or the tropic of sir galahad
That about sums it up for me. America...aint she great......
TODD....out
mac at 10:03PM on Jun 8th 2008