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 4 of 61)
46. Dinesh really doesn't seem to get it. The fact that science can't explain everything lends absolutely no validity to the assumption that fairy tales written by primitive men can. He's right when he states that maybe we don't know all that much about the universe. How much do we know and what's left for us to learn? Nobody can say, after all the universe is a vast place and we're not even sure how much of it we can see yet. But the fact of the matter is that our understanding of the universe dwarfs that of the men who wrote the Bible.
The fact that science doesn't have all of the answers in no way implies that a bunch of guys who weren't all that far removed from the caves did.
Ed W. at 7:37AM on Jun 9th 2008
47. Dinesh misses the point, science can't tell us everything.........yet. Thats the way science works, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion, repeating, independent confirmation of results, peer review, acceptance. We just don't run around with wild conclusions, well cold fusion was one, but they were found out to be wrong, That's how science works to expose the truth. Because the truth isn't Dineshs truth, the entire body of science to him IS a toaster.
Dennis at 7:47AM on Jun 9th 2008
48. Somber; fantastic posts. I slog through DD's posts just so I know what people are arguing about, but I actually enjoy reading yours!
Ryan Anderson at 8:22AM on Jun 9th 2008
49. "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"
And that's fine, science is not supposed to answer those questions directly.
However, as science answers other questions, it becomes clearer and clearer that we can infer the answer to the above questions. Random Accident.
Ryan Anderson at 8:24AM on Jun 9th 2008
50. If it all doesn`t matter. If there is no real reason for our time here. If it is all just really nothing and we are really insignificant and our lives meaningless. Why can`t someone choose to spend their meaningless time worshipping something that provides comfort and a reason to smile in their senseless lives??? Why can`t they waste their useless time in any way they choose without being called a douche bag or full of bullshit???
Is not everything bullshit??? If nothing matters why does how Dinesh spends his time matter???
All of the insults have no value in a whirlpool of emptiness; let him give his time away it doesn`t matter....right???
Dr. Maybee at 8:26AM on Jun 9th 2008
51. Well when someone tries to force ignorance on me and the masses, it matters to us. Education and learning may be taboo to the bornagains, but it is the bedrock of civilization.
That's why its important to call the BS when you see it.
Dennis at 8:37AM on Jun 9th 2008
52. Uh, that you are indeed a cardboard cut-out?
ItIsWhatItIs at 8:51AM on Jun 9th 2008
53. “How Life Began”
“Was life triggered by some event, like lightning hitting a pond full of amino acids? Earth was teeming with life billions of years before the dinosaurs existed. Single-celled organisms inundated the oceans, and the soil swarmed with living creatures. Where did it all come from and how do you go from a single-celled organism to a trillion-celled organism like Man? Cutting-edge science is testing out answers about life's origins and how life can be created on new worlds--or even our own.”
The History Channel WWW.history.com
Monday June 16th
9pm Eastern
rabidmccain at 3:43PM on Jun 9th 2008
54. Dinesh, you make a good point.
This is also at the heart of the controversy of Evolution versus Creation. BOTH sides are religiously motivated. The Creationists stand upon the Word of God and can come up with a logical fit for the fossil record, equal and superior to Evolution. Meanwhile, the Evolutionists, (like terrorists hiding behind innocent civilians), have hijacked science to promote THEIR religious belief, atheism.
Like Pascal's wager, none of this will be known until we each have died. Only then will the Christians be in Heaven, and all the rest on fire in the pit. It is quite foolish to reject Jesus and choose the fiery pit, instead. Hell will not be a party, but a punishment lasting forever, designed for Satan and his followers who have all rejected Christ.
Rev 3:16 at 9:06AM on Jun 9th 2008
55. Rev; "Meanwhile, the Evolutionists, (like terrorists hiding behind innocent civilians)..."
Now that is just stupid.
Ryan Anderson at 9:08AM on Jun 9th 2008
56. McCain has refused to meet with Billy Graham. Which is something all good republicans candidates have done over the last half century.
Not that I'm going to vote for McCain, but based on his apparent stance against evangelicals, I won't be devastated if he wins.
Ryan Anderson at 9:24AM on Jun 9th 2008
57. RA
Holy crap,
As an atheists I have to chime in on your comment about McCain’s stance on evangelicals.
Have you been living under a rock for the past two years?
McCain has gone out of his way to court the likes of Pat Robertson, John Hagee and (before he died, Hooray!!!) Jerry Falwell
With all the evangelicals McCain could associate with Billy Graham is possibly the least offensive with the exception of Joel Osteen.
rabidmccain at 9:32AM on Jun 9th 2008
58. rabidmccain; obviously I'm not paying enough attention. I'm a little put off by Obama's pandering to the Israel lobby, so this headline about McCain caught my eye.
Ryan Anderson at 9:37AM on Jun 9th 2008
59. The only reason human beings even care about questions such as: Why are we here? Where are we headed? and the like is because we have big brains. Do you think a cat worries where it is headed? Does a flower worry about where it came from?
Why do humans care so much about irrevelant questions? So if science proved we came from apes, would you feel comforted? If god came out of the sky and said: All right, you've argued enough, I exist and I created you all, now shut up and worship me and my boy!!!! Would you feel that much better.
If you knew your life before you lived it, would you still want to go on? Part of the beauty of life is that we dont know everything. The thought that you dont know what will happen tommorow; that you might get hit by a truch, win the lottery, or find the woman/man of your dreams. This is why we can go on. I dont want to know if there is a god or not, not until I die. Why? Because it would ruin the surprise.
CaptainCack at 9:42AM on Jun 9th 2008
60. "Like Pascal's wager, none of this will be known until we each have died."
I'm so sick of hearing about Pascal’s idiotic wager. Based on the simple minded logic that drives it if anybody ever invents a God that punishes people in a more inhumane, barbaric way than the Christian's God supposedly punishes them for the hideous crime of not believing in him we’d all have to start worshipping that God regardless of the fact that he exists are nearly non-existent.
The other great logical argument for the simple minded that you often see espoused by Dinesh and his type is no better. The "if you can conceive it, it must exist. Of course any three year old can conceive a monster under the bed, or a ninety foot tall purple rabbit. I'll bet a most of you conceived both of them just now, but just because they exist in your mind does not mean that they exist in reality.
It’s hard to believe that arguments like those are the best the Christian apologists have been able to come up with after putting nearly 2,000 years of effort into trying to “prove” that their God isn’t imaginary.
Ed W. at 9:50AM on Jun 9th 2008