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 3 of 61)
31. ... I mean saying, "Love me, worship me... or be cast into the pit of eternal fire!", seems like something the Emperor in Star Wars would be saying, or maybe the not-so-fictitious wealthy and powerful who mistreat us but imagine that they are powerful enough to force us to love them anyways, not the eternal loving God!
not-pboyfloyd at 10:06PM on Jun 8th 2008
32. D'Souza says, "..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.."
But we're not laughing 'with you'.
Hey Jesse, is it funny that D'Souza compares the entire body of scientific knowledge to the ability to plant a stick far enough away from the flames to not just burn the bread?
not-pboyfloyd at 10:17PM on Jun 8th 2008
33. Jesse,
Earlier in defense of Dinesh, you posted a quote from Aldous Huxley, you are aware I hope that his second most popular book after Brave New World is The Doors of Perception are you not, and that this book is basically a running diary of his experiences under the influence of Mescaline?
Are you also aware that the ingestion of mescaline has been known to produce results akin to a religious experience regardless of whether the user believes or not?
Luckily, for your edification I, Rabidmccain have actually used mescaline.
I was once under the influence of mescaline smack dab amidst the skyscrapers of Manhattan no less when I had, what I thought, was a religious experience. It was right around the corner from the Ziegfield movie theater when the great adversary appeared to me in the his usual form of a goat.
Of course, my mind raced to attaché some sort of cosmic significance to Satan’s appearance before me when my friend nudged excitedly me and asked. “Hey, is that guy actually walking a goat?” the illusion gave way and I saw reality at last.
“Yes, my friend, I’m glad you see it too, he’s actually walking a goat” I answered.
True story.
Only in New York.
rabidmccain at 10:26PM on Jun 8th 2008
34. The planets are all labeled with the seal of creation. Allover can be empirically assessed that everything with or without anima impossibly can reach a state comparable to what we daily perceive around us.
Still, what we cannot perceive with our senses shows that whether the spheres of the sky, nor the molecular composition of our DNA ever could shape themselves by coincidence. Deus ex machina?
Throw a bunch of wood on the shore, and wait until it configures itself into a boat. You can spray chemicals over it... still. It needs you to become a boat, and to get purpose.
There are countless miracles around us, things that show us forces inhabiting not coming from within. Science attempts to describe, yet make them subject to mastership.
But the rules are not in our possession, what ever we do. No genetic manipulation will ever determine the fate of organisms, whether of lower order or higher.
They all fall under the regency of rules that are out of our control. We can only direct our attempts along them, but not break them.
Because the rules are a distinct feature of our life, and all rules have their source in a ruler.
We can't escape them. Only one can be the source: GOD. AND WE SHOULD THANK GOD FOR GIVING US INSIGHT INTO ALL THESE LIFE AFFAIRS.
As one of the comments could have made clear. In common must scientists agree that their means have an end, and they are helpless looking into the body of cancer threatened patients, years after research still incapable to control the cell metabolism of a cell overgrown by a metastasis.
White lab coats, but no clue?
It is good to be a scientist, good to strive for understanding, because it is an act of worship.
The more humble the seeking person, the deeper the insight into truth.
Monumentalizing ourselves by imposing an own world view is written into succession of corporate thought, and thus science a means to delegate own aims into the externality of public funds.
"Science pour science".
There is nothing like that. We pay the research of organizations who betray us later of A) the gained knowledge B) the practical introduction into everyone's life.
The Nobel Prize awards since 1901 exceptional scientific work.
Polemic strides that a famous banker {J.P.M.} had financed the research of a Nobel Price nominee who had erected towers, which would have given before more than 60 years wireless communication and to provide free power-supply.
An author on Wikipedia - which many people won't find reliable enough to mention - did not stress much the central disturbance that the glorious scientist provoced.
It reads that:
"[the project's main financier and leader of the investor group with a voice much beyond a small circle of persons] Morgan, who could not foresee any financial gain from providing free electricity to everyone, balked.
Further details read at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower#History
That project in fact began in 1898, and was "settled" by 1917, when the affair much to the demise of the scientist could blamed on him.
Now we have 2008!
There is no science that needs to be protected anymore. There is no pure gain from knowledge. What we live on is a censored, surrogated, and cooked up instant product that penetrates everyone's mind since birth, and beyond high school graduation.
Who practices science will be found by the conglomerates that can make proper use and profit out of it.
Our state is as consumers looking more advanced, but we are individually not much more developed than was claimed for the Babylonian era.
And that was not a bad time at all. Islamic scientists were over centuries giving the base for medical, numerical, and jurisprudential facts.
Napoleon still derived his code civil largely from Ibn Malik's code. A man who is one of the four Islamic teachers, and lived 600 years before Bonaparte implemented his scientific knowledge in a European Legal System.
What all these teachers stand for is that science is part of the public, not of the public hand.
A GNU-driven approach in science would lose for the attractive financial aspect, but such science would also be more transparent, and not driven into secretly operating groups that are again financed by us.
Science is a straw man (strawman) for whatever we have to receive, and when it means to justify that millions of people shall consume certain goods, and neglect others, the science is a the adequate means to tell us "EAT NO BUTTER, BUT EAT OUR SYNTHETIC BREW-UP MARGARINE THAT CONTAINS NO PESTICIDES, NO ADDITIVES, AND RE-JUVENATES".
Believe into humble and self-committed research, but leave the people the post-secularized evidence for the fact that under consideration of overwhelming and countless proof in our personal surrounding nothing can be, but with the will of GOD.
Ameen Th. Mann at 2:45AM on Jun 9th 2008
35. ATHEIST
Once again, Dinesh shows his Stupidity.
Reply to: 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. (end0
Science has provided us with a detailed answer to "Where did we come from".
Oh, wait. Dinesh is one of the idiots who think humans are inhabited by spirits that came from some place outside our reality. That the spirits leave our bodies and go someplace else to continue after our bodies die.
NONSENSE.
Total friggin' Catholic NONSENSE.
The answers are all over the Internet.
Dinesh is the victim of a Con Game, and is LYING to himself.
there is NO REASON why human beings are here.
Every human being can INVENT a purpose for their own life... but there's NOTHING in the way of a greater purpose.
that's the Answer.
We know the Answers.
The guys who run the con Game, who want to FOOL us, post LIES about science and what science knows.
Shame on you, Ignorant LYING Catholic FOOL!
Science has the answers to the questions you just asked. You just don't like them.
William Hays at 11:24PM on Jun 8th 2008
36. ATHEIST
Reply to: 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?"
What a friggin' Catholic FooL.
He's been taught to be STUPID.
Specifically, to make up stuff that NEVER HAPPENED, and then try to have a conversation based on it.
That's called "Stupidity" in any language.
Catholic stupidity.
Reply to: In short, he is closed to supernatural explanations, no matter what the data, and is only open to natural explanations. Dinesh
____________
More NONSENSE.
Shermer is NOT "closed to explanations based on the data.'
In his question, Dinesh made up STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED.
Like the resurrection of Jesus.
If you can FOOL people into starting from a FALSE premise, sure, you can manipulate them...
... but the Correct Answer is, we don't let Catholic idiots START from a FALSE PREMISE.
William Hays at 11:40PM on Jun 8th 2008
37. I think Dinesh is making a mistake when he says men like Shermer have "faith" in scientists. They have "reason" to think science has his interests in mind (not exclusice to nontheistic interests). Science has made warm toast pop out of his toaster and heavy oblects fly across the sky. This is not faith its evidence of the effectiveness of science, Dinesh even begins his blog with it!
The problem arises when blind faith gets in the way of empiricism. Notions and ideas don't explain our world, observation does. Religion explains the universe no better than phrenology explains behavior. Science can only come so far but many intelligent people will tell you its not perfect. People like Dinesh will say that there is more than the natural world. People like Shermer would say that there MIGHT be more than the natural world but there is nothing natural that suggests this.
Anonymous at 5:07AM on Jun 9th 2008
38. ATHEIST
And the Stupidity just keeps on coming.
The friggin' Christians won't rest until they give a lobotomy with everyone who has an IQ over 100.
reply to: 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.(end)
When did you notice THAT?
Because I think it's another case of a friggin' Christian idiot making up something that NEVER HAPPENED.... and running off at the mouth for five minutes based on his hypothetical.
Atheists are NOT stupid.
Maybe everyone Observant knows is an idiot, and he assumes everyone is an idiot.
Not true.
William Hays at 12:52AM on Jun 9th 2008
39. D'Souza's conclusion, "One may say that science has blinded them to the things that science cannot possibly tell them."
I guess you really have to watch out that science doesn't 'close your mind' then?
What if we just closed the schools and universities and told kids only what they need to know... that God did it.
We could all read(if we bothered even learning to read) that D'Souza is almost magical in the way that he can knit together total bullshit and come up with 'gold'!
Is science really 'to be feared'?
Renzo or Jesse will be coming on to explain that the sophisticated Christian wouldn't read 'fear or disgust of science' into this blog.
I'm sure that that is true, but the Observant's of this world, D'Souza's target audience, will.
not-pboyfloyd at 1:05AM on Jun 9th 2008
40. Ahhh, DD. You try sooooo hard to get everyone else to think just like you. No thanks. I have a brain.
Uncla Al at 2:17PM on Jun 9th 2008
41. ::Earlier in defense of Dinesh, you posted a quote from Aldous Huxley, you are aware I hope that his second most popular book after Brave New World is The Doors of Perception are you not, and that this book is basically a running diary of his experiences under the influence of Mescaline?
::Are you also aware that the ingestion of mescaline has been known to produce results akin to a religious experience regardless of whether the user believes or not?
Hi Mccain. Yes, I’m aware that Huxley, brilliant as a non-fiction writer (an a true lover of science), gave way to the nonsense of Doors, and finally lost his marbles, and my respect, writing Island. He wrote The Perennial Philosophy, a fascinating work, before his “experiments”, and based his later controlled Mescaline ingestion on the idea that the nervous system and brain work to limit the flow of consciousness, of Mind through our minds, and that by “bypassing” these we can have broader experiences. But he also notes, during the experience, that his will was basically totally shut down, and he sensed this was a problem. It is. “I was born to adore and obey”, says C.S. Lewis, and elsewhere he states that Christianity is a “fighting religion”, by which he means it involves a transformation of our will, which is tough, and which may or may not affect our consciousness in terms of experience, depending on the extent to which we are transformed. Huxley was warned by one of his spiritual mentors that if you’re an idiot going into the experience, you’ll be an idiot coming out. To me, Huxley was the prime example of the need to be grounded in traditional Christianity, which includes contemplative spirituality while avoiding the dangers of Gnosticism.
An excellent book, if you can get a hold of it, is called Between Heaven And Hell by Peter Kreeft, who presents a fictional dialogue about religion featuring Huxley, Lewis, and John F. Kennedy -- all of whom died on the same day.
Jesse at 6:11AM on Jun 9th 2008
42. ::Hey Jesse, is it funny that D'Souza compares the entire body of scientific knowledge to the ability to plant a stick far enough away from the flames to not just burn the bread?
Science certainly advances the cause of material needs, and fulfills some intellectual needs, but it falls infinitely short of meeting that which is most important -- emotional and spiritual needs, which hinge on relationships. What good is science if it is not subject to ethical considerations? What good is science in forming my conscience and granting me forgiveness and help towards becoming virtuous? What good is science to the person on death's door step? What good is science when you reflect that in a hundered years you and your loved ones will be nothing but a memory (in whose mind?)? What good is science in comparison to the infinite worth of your loved one's, for whom you hope eternal life exists (what's that you say, you don't have hope for them?)? Yes, in comparison to what is truly valuable, and what certain scientists treat as burnt toast, I can see the need for reversing the order, and placing tings in a perspective the way D'Souza has.
Jesse at 6:33AM on Jun 9th 2008
43.
Knowledge, good sound knowledge is like petals of flowers. Drop it in turbulent waters and you’ll never see it again. Wait for the waters to become still, then you can watch these petals float down, alight on the water surface. You apprehend not just their own beauty but what they lend to the entire scene.
rg at 7:18AM on Jun 9th 2008
44. "Throw a bunch of wood on the shore, and wait until it configures itself into a boat. You can spray chemicals over it... still. It needs you to become a boat, and to get purpose."
It needs you to have purpose for you. The wood already had a purpose, if you want to call it that. It was food for insects and the insects were food for other animals. It was also busy breaking down to becme nutrients for other plants.
Gonna be a hot one today, might have to go for ice cream or maybe even a swim after lunch. Keep cool peeps.
a born atheist at 7:18AM on Jun 9th 2008
45. The McCain's are big fans of science. Big proponents, they, of the pharmaceutical sciences.
America's Most Gangsta at 9:15AM on Jun 9th 2008