I’m reading The Atheist’s Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg, who is the R. Taylor Cole Professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Duke University.
He advocates a new term for atheism: scientism. “This is the conviction that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything; that science’s description of the world is correct in its fundamentals; and that when ‘complete,’ what science tells us will not be surprisingly different from what it tells us today” (pp. 6–7).
In the book, he asks and provides “scientific” answers to life’s “persistent questions. On pages 2–3, he provides a précis of both questions (which are italicized) and answers:
- Is there a God? No.
- What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.
- What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.
- What is the meaning of life? Ditto.
- Why am I here? Just dumb luck.
- Does prayer work? Of course not.
- Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?
- Is there free will? Not a chance!
- What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on as before, except us.
- What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.
- Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.
- Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes.
- What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it.
- Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.
- Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with.
This précis is, admittedly, a bit chirpy, but the pages that follow provide chapter and verse of scientific evidence in favor of each of his answers.
Which got me thinking: If, as Rosenberg argues, “There is no self, soul, person”; if there is no free will; if morality consists of doing what makes me feel better; and if “Anything goes,” then why does Rosenberger—or any “atheist” or “scientismist” who thinks like him, for that matter—critique people for believing in God? On his own account, those people—my people—did not choose their beliefs. There is no “self” or “soul” that has the “free will” to choose. Rather, according to Rosenberg, their brains tricked them into belief through a “hyperactive agency detector” (p. 327). One can hardly be blamed, morally speaking, for holding a belief that one is biologically hardwired to have, especially when “There is no moral difference between [right and wrong, good and bad]” in the first place. And what if religious belief makes the believer more happy than he or she would’ve been apart from the belief? How can one criticize that person for being “irrational,” which is a moral value judgment, by the way?
My initial impression after reading this précis is that if science entails what Rosenberg argues it does, then science is a load of crap. Or at least scientism is. I’ll let you know which when I finish reading the book.
Your thoughts?
GeorgePWood.com 
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The first response to scientism is that it is a self-defeating, and thus obviously false, view. The definition you quote (necessarily any definition of scientism) is not testable by any scientific method, thus not knowable by any scientific method, thus false before it gets out of the gate. Scientism is a non-starter, and the fact that atheists are still trying to argue for it is an example of the lengths to which they will reach to hang onto their views.
I just finished reading the book. Rosenberg is philosophically insane. When faced with the following premises (all true):
1. Atheist materialism requires that thoughts be generated from matter.
2. A thought, to be a thought, must be about something.
3. Instances of matter cannot be about other instances of matter.
4. We seem to have thoughts.
One should recognize the following implications. Either:
A. Because we do, in fact, have thoughts, atheist materialism must be false.
or
B. Because atheist materialism is true, we do not, in fact, have thoughts.
The sane man chooses A. Rosenberg and the insane choose B. Of course, if we do not have thoughts that are about anything, then how in the world could one have come to hold premises 1 through 4 in the first place?
Edward Feser has commented on a review of Rosenberg’s book in First Things that Rosenberg has given a giant reductio ad absurdum argument, and instead of rejecting the premises that got him there, Rosenberg embraces the absurdities.
The book is self-refuting on almost every page. For example just after Rosenberg argues that we cannot have thoughts about anything, he asserts that this is something we need to think about.
Absolutely insane.