Let's play 20 questions only it;s 25 by Jeff Lowder

Knight plays chess with Death, from Ingmar 
Bergman's great film The Seventh Seal 





Jeff Lowder at the Secular Outpost has 25 questions for theists They are not intended to be tricks or rhetorical but to drive home his point about his probability argument,

Lowder says of his questions:

Many people incorrectly assumed that the list was supposed to function as a list of “gotcha!” questions. Even our own Keith Parsons commented, “Any Bible-believing Christian could easily answer these.” Sure enough, many did. It’s easy to invent “just-so,” ad hoc explanations for why, if God exists, God allowed some fact F to obtain. But that is of very little philosophical interest. (More on that in a moment.) But even more important, it misses the point....
Each question is a specific instance of a more generic ‘meta-question’: “Which explanatory hypothesis, naturalism or theism, is the best explanation?” For details, see “Basic Structure of My Evidential Arguments.” That page lays out the schema for all of my evidential arguments.

Lowder's major point is a huge probability argument in  which he shows over and over again in a variety of ways that reality is more easily explained by naturalism and thus it is more probable as an explanation.I contend that the argumemt, like the questions primarily reflect what Tillich calls the "surface level" being thus of course they reflect naturalism because he's not examining areas where supernature is an issue, Hopefully this will be seen in the answers I give. I will only do half the questions this time.



Question:
1. The question “Why is there something rather than nothing” presupposes “nothing” as being  the normal state of affairs. Why believe that? Why can’t we flip the question on its head? In other words, why can’t it be the case that the normal state of affairs is for things to actually exist and nothingness itself would be weird?  (HT: Thy Kingdom Come (Undone))


Answer:

No it does not, the question does not assume nothing is normal it assumes it's the only alternative to being. I do not mean to offend you,I respect you as a thinker but that strikes me as suggesting you need to read Heidegger. Thet question was made famous by him it has a huge palemcest that is firmly rooted in Heideggerian fermentation. It is not intended to evoke God, Heidegger was an atheist. In fact he says Christians can't answer it because they have a ready jade answer, so the question is really like an ink blot,it just spurs thinking. Tillich moves on from Heidegger and expropriates the questions as a starting point but only in light of the Heiderrian history of the question. Modern apologists know nothing of these things most of the time,l thin k They should.

Q
2. Given that the universe has a finite age, why did the universe begin with time rather than in time.



A

Time is based upon the rate of change in physical conditions,any physical condition constitutes a universe so you can't have time running prior to having something to change, thus a universe. I don't think that contradicts reactivity,I know matter warps space and creates time but that still makes time a function of space, or the universe. Thus time and matter must begin together. In relativity the four coordinates, time and three physical dimensions are all one thing they can't be separated thus space/time. Nothing in that formulation makes God less probable.

3. Why is so much of our universe intelligible without any appeal to supernatural agency? Why does the history of science contains numerous examples of naturalistic explanations replacing supernatural ones and no examples of supernatural explanations replacing naturalistic ones?

This is really two separate question. Because you are only looking at the bits that are on the surface, that's the natural it's empirical. This is what Tillich means when he links atheism with "surface level of being." You are only thinking of what you can see. If you want to deal with morality or meaning or anything below the surface then you do need SN. Don't forget my understanding of that term is different from yours. It has nothing to do with magic and does not necessarily involve miracles. It is synonymous with God consciousness.

4. Why is the physical universe so unimaginably large?

That's explained by FT argument. Evolution needs space. That question requires only knowledge of the surface so it's not necessarily a theist's question. Evolution includes the stars,m the universe as a whole, thus it needs lots of room.

5. If you believe that visual beauty is evidence of God, why isn’t the universe saturated with auditory, tactile, or other non-visual types of sensory beauty?

I don't know that I do believe that. But it is saturated with auditory and other kinds of beauty but you don't notice it unless you are blind. If you want to know the valid logical best version of the aesthetic argument read Has Urs Von Balthasar.

6. If you believe the universe is fine-tuned for intelligent life, why isn’t our universe teeming with life, including life much more impressive than human life?

Who says it's not? we have insufficient data for that assumption.

7. Why would God use biological evolution as a method for creation? Do you have any answer that is independent of the scientific evidence for evolution?

You are making an anthropomorphic assumption  that God is so much like us that has to rationcentenate the decisions to create in such a way that we would appreciate it. How about he just chose evolution because it's the default from naturalistic creation. You are assuming God doesn't work like a principle but has to say "I am God I shall create stuff." Canadian theologian John Macquarrie has a phrase "being let's be" to describe God's creative process that more of a manager for creative principles. I think God actively engages with consciousness but since he's working on a higher level of consciousness we would not understand it.

We might theorize a reason we can understand. It would deal with my view my theory I call "soeteriological drama." God wants a neutral world where his existence is not a dead giveaway so we have to seek truth and thus internalize the values of the good, Read more.

8. Why would God desire to create embodied moral agents, as opposed to unembodied minds (such as souls, spirits, or ghosts)? Why is the human mind dependent on the physical brain?

That is also answered by the link above to bacteriological drama, If we were pure spirit  beings (pure mind) we would have no doubt of God and we woudl not seek truth and thus internalize the values of the good. 

The answers are hiding in plain sight, We can find them but we have to look,We have to want them, That may sound like a game of cat and mouse but I don't it ism, i think it's necessary to internalize values of the good.

This question makes me think of one of my favorite Twilight Zone's. The most philosophical of the show. A solider, a clown ,some others are trapped in a room with no doors or windows, They have no memory of being who they are. Turns out they are toys in a toy box at Christmas. We find ourselves here in this life we have no idea why we are here they answer could be so radically different we can't know it, in that metaphor the answer is  determinism,

9. Did Australopithecus have a soul? What about homo habilis? Homo erectus? Neanderthals? Why or why not? (HT: Keith Parsons)

Yes. "The only Hebrew word traditionally translated "soul" (nephesh) in English language Bibles refers to a living, breathing conscious body, rather than to an immortal soul." Soul is not necessary  the thing that lives on but a symbol for life, by extension the relationship of the living being to God Thus saved souls or lost souls. The thing that survives death is spirit,although in translation these can be synonymous.

Soul in the Bible - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_in_the_Bible

10. How do souls interact with physical matter? Do you have any answer that is not tantamount to “I don’t know?” (HT: Keith Parsons)

The term soul is most often used of the physical life of the person so it;s interaction is obvious. Now you will ask about spirit the same question plug in spirit. Spirit = mind. How do minds interact with physical matter? By perceiving and interpreting it.

11. If you believe humans have free will, why would humans have free will if God exists? Why are we able to exercise free will in some situations but not others?

Question is backward. If God did not exist we should expect biological organisms to be deterministic. It's only with humans made in God's image we should expect reason and free will.

12. Why are pain and pleasure so connected to the biological goals of survival and reproduction, but morally random? Is there some greater good that logically requires (or logically requires risking) that suffering be used to motivate animals to pursue the biological goal of self-preservation? Does some moral end make it desirable for suffering to continue even when it serves no biological purpose? For example, why do sentient beings, including animals which are not moral agents, experience pain or pleasure that we do not know to be biologically useful?

You are only thinking in terms of physical pleasure that is a function physical existence. You can't explaimn having a physical body and yetalso finding higher forms of  pleasure especially when it requires higher forms of  consciousness.

13. Why do only a fraction of living things, including the majority of sentient beings, thrive? In other words, why do very few living things have an adequate supply of food and water, are able to reproduce, avoid predators, and remain healthy? Why would God create a world in which all sentient beings savagely compete with one another for survival? Why do an even smaller fraction of organisms thrive for most of their lives? Why do almost no organisms thrive for all of their lives? 

We do have physical existence, that's not doubted by any. Most organisms are not made in Gods image and wont share in eternal life so they are just accouterments of  physical existence. Their well being is tied entirely to the physical realm. The higher up the scale of mental activity we go the closer we come to spirit, So we might find animals like dogs with spiritual qualities, since they have emotions they might find some pleasure in spiritual basics like emotion.

You can talk about the physical workings of the empirical end of the universe forever and not mention God because it's created to run on it's own. Then of course you can play the games of reductionist designed to keep God hidden.


 That doesn't mean you can leave God out if you want to go beyond the surface. Science doesn't go beyond the surface (not it's job) so of course science appears not to need God. The universe is made to look neutral.



I'll do the rest next week

God is not a Plausible Explaination for the Universe: God is Truth

Atheists have often argued that God is not a plausible explanation for the universe. What they mean by that is that we don't know enough about God to judge the value of the explanation, and that issues such as the complexity problem prevent a clear understanding. The plausible explanation thing is not a very good standard by which to judge the efficacy of belief. The reason for religions is not a scientific motivation to explain the workings of the physical world. The reason religion exists is becuase we have an empirical sense of the numinous, a sense referred to as "the religious a priori." Religion is not intended as an explanation in the sense that scinece is. It's not meant to be a means of explaining the workings of the physical world. That kind of thinking went out with the nineteenth century.

The concept of God is that of the foundation of reality. There is no basis for a standard of plausibility in dealing with foundations of reality since we have no other examples of foundational reality to compare to. This observation in a nutshell beats all of their arguments about plausibility, because it says that plausibility is the wrong standard by which to judge the efficacy of belief. This observation leads to a realization that actually destroys most of the arguments made about God an probability and standard of scinece.

Science has to have two things: predictive power and falsifiability. That's in addition to replicator and representative sample and double all the together things all of those are made impossible if you don't have these two. Science can't prove it can only disprove. if there is no disproof it's not assumed proven it's assumed a match with theory then theory is assumed to be verisimilitude. Science is not the acquisition of truth its' verisimilitude.


Since God is synonymous with truth (according to the primordial assertion of belief--that's the foundational assumption made in belief--the religious a prori) God is not subject to falsification. God is not subject to predictability God is not a matter of empiricism becuase God is not a thing in creation. This idea that God is synonymous with turth is met with consternation by atheists, and one can understand why. One might think this is becuase since the atheist is dedicated to rejecting believe he/she can't very well accept a religious a priori that puts God in at the foundational level. Yet, there's a more basic reason than that why this idea is upsetting them. It's because it is predicated upon a different notion of truth than any that they understand or have been taught to think about. The typical atheist notion of truth is pretty much one of verisimilitude. It's surface level, it excludes any sort of depth of being. Things are not any more than they seem. There's no underlying issue with being it's just a surface matter of does X exist or not?

The notion of truth with which St. Augustine understood God's synonymy is a kin to the concept dreaded by Postmoderns, the "meta narrative." We are talking about Truth with a capital "T." In bold letters yet. This notion of truth is the overarching explanation for all of reality, depth and all, not just the surface explanation of the existence of a given X. This kind of truth is apt to be rejected by atheists because it hints at not only God but notions such as sin and judgment and virtue and the whole metaphysical nine yards. This is not only installing God at the epistemological and metaphysical level, without a fight so to speak, but it also excludes the replacement religion atheism turns to for substitution in the face of losing the advantages of God belief. In other words, one can't work the doings of science upon the epistemic foundation of reality becuase it's at a higher epistemological level than anything in science: it's not a matter of inductive abstraction.


Belief in God can be warranted or unwarranted, not proved or disproved.

Augustine never made an argument for the existence of God because for him God was known with certainty and immediacy. God is immediately discerned in the apprehension of truth, thus need not be “proved.” God is the basis of all truth, and therefore, cannot be the object of questioning about truth, since God is he medium through which other truths can be known.[1] Tillich said:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[2]

Augustine says God is truth. He doesn’t so much say God is being as he says God is truth. But to say this in this way is actually in line with the general theme we have been discussing, the one I call “super-essential Godhead,” or Tillich’s existential ontology. Augustine puts the emphasis upon God’s name as love, not being. Since he was a neo Platonist he thought of true reality as beyond being and thus he thought of God as “beyond being.”[3] This makes no sense in a modern setting since for us “to be” is reality, and to not be part of being would meaning being unreal. But in the platonic context, true reality was beyond this level of reality and what we think of as “our reality” or “our world” is only a plane reflection of the true reality. We are creatures of a refection in a mud puddle and the thing reflected that is totally removed from our being is the true reality. It was this distinction Tillich tried to preserve by distinguishing between being and existence.

Augustine looked to the same passage in Exodus that Gilson quotes in connection with Aquinas. Augustine’s conclusions are much the same about that phrase “I am that I am.” This is one of his key reasons for his identification between God and truth. He saw the nature of God’s timeless being as a key also to identifying God with truth. The link between God and truth is the Platonic “one.” Augustine puts the forms in the mind of God, so God becomes the forms really. The basis of this identification is based partly upon God’s eternal nature. From that point on it’s all an easy identification between eternal verities, such as truth, eternal being, beauty, the one, and God. The other half of the equation is God’s revelation of himself as eternal and necessary through the phrase, for very similar reasons to those listed already by Gilson, between I am that I am and being itself (or in Augustine’s case the transcended of being). “He answers, disclosing himself to creature as Creator, as God to man, as Immortal to mortal, eternal to a thing of time he answers ‘I am who I am.’”[4]

That means in accepting belief in god one is not merely adding a fact to the universe or accepting a proposition about the existence of another thing in the world, but accepting a concept of truth as opposed to other concepts of truth.

---

[1] Donald Keef, Thomism and the Ontological Theology: A Comparison of Systems. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1971, 140.

The “two Ultimates” discussed are philosophy and Religion.

[2] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

---

[3] The quotation above from the Levenson and Westphal book says Augistine believe God was being itself, Marion seems to say that Augustine put God beyond being. I think it’s debatable as to which he did because he didn’t say directly which it was. I’m assuming Marion is probably right just because of the time in which he lived and because he was a Platonic thinker.

[4] Carl Levenson and Johnathan Westphal, ed, Reality:Hackett readings Philosophy. " New York: Hackett Publishing. translated by Edmond Hill, 54 see the link

Objectivity: the illusion of Technique

This is the culmination of a dialogue between an atheist poster on Cadre blog, named "Gary" and myself.[1] There are two major issues in this discussion, the need for "objective evidence" for a creator and historical evidence for the Resurrection. Running through both issues one assumption, the atheist assertion that science gives them the objective evidence and that religion has none because it does not have the kind of scientific backing their lauding scene is suppose to give them. The illusion is created that science is supporting atheism when in reality they are merely juxtaposing (unjustly) scientific data as a whole vs. belief in God, the pretense is that these  are competing views. They are not.,What allows them to complete the illusion is that their view is established by science as fact, That is accomplished by pretending that science and God compete for believers,

All of that is based upon the dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity, This dichotomy is greatly misused,They assert anything not subjects to quantitative analysis is "subjective" and any doubt in God is "objective." The renegade sociologist C. Wright Mills called objectivity: the cloak of objectivity.[2]"Why? Because one uses the objective nature of quantitative analysis to hind biased assumptions,This is all the atheists are doing when they try to impose this illusion that their use of techie affords them a factual basis for their doubt,


Gary said...
Again, I am perfectly willing to accept the existence of evidence for a Creator, I just don't see good evidence for your god, Yahweh. 


Joe:

I believe in Jesus because of the things person I know told me that Jesus did in her life. I did not just believer her but since she was very intelligent it got my attention and I began searching. I was. I was therefore, disposed to call for Jesus aid when I needed it and he answered. I can;t make that happen in your life. All I can do is tell you it worked in mine.
I understand how the OT would be off putting. Really I see the OT as just a cultural artifact that is there to make the mission of Messiah meaningful. Please read my page on Biblical inspiration because I am not an inerrantist I don;t accept all of the OT.
Jesus is the revelation the Bible is just the record of some people's encounters with the Divine.

Gary
Is it possible that the THEORIES otherwise referred to as "Natural Laws" are sometimes violated? Sure. But if they are, the evidence for such violations is poor. 


Joe:

you are still thinking in terms of violating laws, they are not laws, they are only descriptions of how the universe behave since not 100% there's room for other descriptions.
Lourdes evidence is good, people who haven't studied it act like they know all aout it most of what they say about it is Bullshit.

Gary
I believe that Yahweh is an ancient myth.


Joe:

J is the place holder they used because they could not speak his name. They wrote a lot of stuff using their tribal religion to radicalize the political situation. But When J sought to show us first hand what "he" really is like and want "he" became Jesus to do it,

Gary
To me the evidence suggests that the Creator, whoever he (or she) is, is a brilliant scientist, tucked away in his laboratory somewhere, madly concocting this and that invention, without any care in the world for the end result of his inventions, as long as he finds the process entertaining.


Joe:

you are deifying science because you think is accessible to you and God is not, Science is not the mediator between us and God. I can see why you would use science because it reveals 'God;s work, in that way some of god';s mind, but Jesus isGod's mind.Loogos =ratoojal, Logos is is the rational of God.

In this second phase of exchange the immediate issue is his assertion that without guards on the tomb of Jesus the body must have been stolen. That would be the more parsimonious way to account f or the empty tomb,He removes the guards on the premise that Matthew being the sole source for them they have no historical basis. He quotes William Lane Craig saying that the majority of scholars would not accept the historicity of the guards.[3] My response was varied but the basic argument I made,that he never one single time responded to, is that there is a second ancient source for the guards that puts them on  apart with or even pre dates Matthew and is not derivative of Matthew,That is from the Passion narrative as seen in Gpete (apocryphal gospel of peter). That is established by Raymond Brown.[4] Both Crosson and Koster put the Passion narrative at mid first century pre dating Matthew by about 30 years.[5]

After never answering my argument about the second source he continues to assert the lack of historicity for the guards based upon the assertion (now disproved) that there is only one source for them. It's true both sources get their info from the passion narratives in a sense there is only one source, But that source is a lot closer to the original in time and more firmly embedded in the milieu of eye witnesses than is Matthew.  After ignoring my argumet he comes out with this:


Gary
No amount of objective evidence is EVER going to overturn the subjective evidence in your "heart", will it, Joe? The "spirit" that speaks to you and gives you comfort within is all the evidence you need to believe.
Joe:

You are still working in that mistaken dichotomy between subject.object. There is no objectivity, an objective standard is merely less subjective, There is no perfect objectivity and cultivation of that illusion is merely something to hide behind.
personal experience is true compromise. The scientific data of my studies prove the assertions of my subjective experiences,200 studies you have none, none at all,I have 200 backing my world view. Backing my experiences of God.
Learn this term. Inter=subjective, Not merely subjective but INTER-subjective. Objectivity is a sham but inter-subjectivity means it's confirmed and validated even though subjective.

Gary
There is another word for that concept, Joe. It's called: an imaginary friend. Imaginary friends provide very REAL comfort and a very real sense of security but the friend itself is NOT real, Joe. It is an illusion.
Joe:

that is a mockery of the God hater club,an attempt to disvalue and degrade personal experiences and the reality of God, But you have nothing like the vast body of confining data I have backing my views,you have not one single study reproving your view.
science does not offer you a body of conferring data, it's an excavate you are not scientific, there is no scientific basis for disbelief in God,
when you say we've reached an impasse you really mean you want to quite before you have e comnfronted with more reality that blows your ideology out of the water,,

In speaking of vast body of confirming data I not only include Brown on the guards gut also the studies on religious experience in my book The Trace of God. At every step the atheist apologist uses objectivity as a smoke screen to hide his ideological assumption, and all the while using the subjective basis of experience as an accusation of falsehood, even though totally groundless given the inter-subjective basis for belief.


Soures


[1] Atheist in comment section, "Do You say this of Your Own Accord," Cadre Comments blog, comment Section (Apil 26, 2017)
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6363362&postID=6054220452243446998&isPopup=true


[2 ] C.Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination

[3] William Lane Craig quoted by "Vinny" in "Matthews Guards and The  Evolution of William Lane Craig." Do you Ever Think about The Things you Think about? (SATURDAY, JUNE 150), 2013, blog URL  accessed5/10/17
http://youcallthisculture.blogspot.com/2013/06/matthews-guards-and-evolution-of.html

[4] Ray Brown Death of the Messsiah, New York, NY: Doubleday, 1994 1322

see also my article on "Have Guards Will Argue, " Religious a priori accessed 5/10/17
http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/

[5] Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development, London. Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark; 2nd prt. edition, 1992, 218-220.

Scientism is as Scietism Does

 

In discussion with atheists on CADRE "Skeptical" and "Pixey"  divert attention from my last missive with knit picks about the definition of scienitism Instead of focusing on the point m that the Institute of health defining scientism against Thomas Kuhn did not understand Kuhn, they choose to throw up smoke screens about which definition do I accept?I have maintained that all the definitions they offer are just different versions of the same concept any idea oriented around the hegemony of science overall other fields and forms of knowledge. Eric Sotnak said...

One problem with the term "scientism" is that is is far too often little more than the defensive accusation that "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That is, it is an accusation of narrow-mindedness. But as such it has far more bark than bite.  That may b but not the way I use it,My accusation is not narrow mindedness but ideological hegemony,

Webster’s defines ideology primarily as “visionary theorizing.” Secondly, it defines ideology as a “systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture.” Here it makes three subdivisions: “a :  a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture b :  a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture c :  the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.” [1] So we see that scientific ideologies are about theorizing, not the great fortress of facts that some wish the mystique of science to imply. An ideology is a social movement or a political movement. Another dictionary brings this out more clearly:

Ideology

1.

the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group.

2.

such a body of doctrine, myth, etc., with reference to some political and social plan, as that of fascism, along with the devices for putting it into operation.

3.

Philosophy .

a.

the study of the nature and origin of ideas.

b.

a system that derives ideas exclusively from sensation.

4.

theorizing of a visionary or impractical nature.[2] 

According to John Adams, Napoleon popularized the word “ideology,” which was used by the French philosophes. They used it in a positive light to highlight their own ideas, and in a negative sense to characterize the folly of others. Adams said that ideology was an attempt to explain reality because it was too complex.[3] According to Terry Eagleton, there is no one single meaning of the term, yet he seems to have clear enough idea what he means by it. It’s very common to find Marxists and other kinds of social and political revolutionaries using the word as though it means the legitimating storytelling of the dominant social project. As Eagleton points out, does that mean the rebelling faction doesn’t have their own ideology? That they never exaggerate or justify but always tell the truth? He says, “If, for example, ideology means any set of beliefs motivated by social interests, then it can’t simply signify the dominate forms of thought in a society.”[4] Ideology is what the other guy has, he claims. No one owns up to being ideological. In his review of Dawkins’s book The God Delusion, it’s pretty clear where Eagleton thinks Dawkins can be placed in relation to ideology:

Card Carrying Rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist that we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first year theology student wince.[5]

For practical purposes I define ideology in a general sense as : one idea that defines the world and determines how one sees everything, filtering all perceptions through the lens of its truth regime.

Ideology and Science

It seems that from the upper echelons of the world of books to the mid-level management of opinion leaders in movements such as new atheism, to the popular level of the internet and message boards, a truism has spread far and wide that science is the only form of knowledge. James Felton Keith quotes the architect of physicalism, Otto Neurath, as saying: “according to physicalism the language of physics is the universal language of science, and any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on physical objects.”[6] In 1964 George Richmond Walker wrote: “the thesis that art is important because, like science, it gives us knowledge of reality, has not fared well in modern philosophy [among logical positivists and the analytic school] …all cognitive experience belongs to science and they hold that the business of the philosopher is to analyze the methods, terms, and laws of science in order to clarify their logical structure and empirical content.” Even though this was written in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists way back in 1964,[7] it apparently has filtered down to the masses. We find the whole movement of new atheism thriving on this idea: the mid-level management of that movement and the popular level are both abuzz with it. As Mark Thomas of “Godless Geeks” tells us:

Our understanding of the world around us, and our abilities to predict what will happen are based on naturalism — the basis of science.  Naturalism is also the basis for how all people live their lives most of the time.To be explicit, modern science relies on methodological naturalism.  This means that science doesn’t incorporate any supernatural or religious assumptions and doesn’t seek any religious or supernatural explanations.  Science is the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.  Science also depends on mathematics, which likewise has no religious or supernatural component.[8]

On the strictly popular level, Answers.com tells us “Science is the only form of knowledge. There is no way to know something without it being scientific in some way.”[9] As Stephen Barr comments:

“From the positivists this is to be expected.”[10]25

That’s what the positivist movement was about: philosophy embracing that it was not science and seeking to gain its share of control through the priesthood of knowledge. That Walker in 1964 analyzed the fortunes of art as an epistemic resource, was merely the valid job of a top-level thinker in the world of letters; it’s what they do. But when popular sources start saying things like “naturalism is the basis of science,” then we have cause for concern. Naturalism is not the basis for how we know things, nor is it the basis of science. Naturalism is a philosophy and an ideology— and science is the basis of it.

I can understand why one would say that science is naturalistic, because science must assume naturalistic means of knowing. But there’s a big difference in saying that science must make naturalistic assumptions and that “naturalism is the basis of science! The poppycock that “there is no way to know anything unless it’s scientific” is just popular twaddle. I know what I had for breakfast without using science. They are making a leap from “scientific knowing” to “naturalism” as though they are the same thing. Naturalism is an ideological understanding of the world. If science is so ordinary and so all-encompassing that ordinary observations that have no systematic nature are part of science, then religious belief is part of science too. These are actually philosophical statements, not scientific statements. They represent a philosophical doppelganger of science that rides on its coattails. Science is not a sweeping proclamation on the nature of all reality.

The problem is that no one actually sticks to this. Many people who do science for a living, and people who just love science and read about it in their spare time, as well as people who know almost nothing about it other than that society reveres it as the umpire of reality, all confuse the ends of science with their own agendas. They all baptize their own projects, beliefs, ideologies and prejudices in the light of science and confuse the goals and ends of the latter with the former. Richard Dawkins confuses the goals of science with his own distaste for religion. Others try to expand science into the realm of ethics, while still others, regarding it as the only form of knowledge, use it as a replacement for metaphysics and epistemology (all the while denouncing metaphysics and epistemology as “stupid philosophy that makes stuff up”). It’s hard to find pure scientific motives and at the same time stay within the domain of science, which is firmly planted in the department of “workings of the physical world.” Those who love and do science are humans, and they are prejudiced and biased and they mix their own motives, agendas and ideologies with the doing of science. For this reason science is a relative human construct. It is not the only form of knowledge and it is not the arbiter of all reality. These ideologies that attach themselves to science are the “others” of science.

Byron Jennings, Physicist from Canada, writes In Defense of Scientism.[11] He asserts that science should be able to determine the existence of God and he's going to do that the basis of a physical trace of phenomena they same way he would determiner any other kind of physical object, this is exactly one of the major arguments I've made against reductionists. They assume reality hasto be has we know it because we can control it. Anything that can't be controlled by our methods can;t exist, He uses the example of a tree, We know there;s a tree because we find its leaves, So God must shed physical qualia or there's no God. He says we should be able to prove God by our scientific methods, This obviously fits the basic concept of scientism even though we might subdivide it under different degrees. All the definition they taught in an attempt to confuse the issue are but various degrees of the same idea, Why should we assume God must be physical? They want to assume on ly physical things can exist because they can't control non physical.

Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, gave the commencement address at Brandeis University in 2013. Peter Lawler wrote an article for The Standard based upon that speech.[12] He pointed out the threat to the arts and thus to freedom from scientism and technologism. He points to Neuroscientists who seek to displace theology, philosophy, poetry. This is the idea that there is a ready genetic explanation for all we do and that understanding brain function is to understand all that there is to know. We can see that through Cyone’s literalistic approach to literature. The technologism of which he speaks is a good example of what I talk about in chapter one under the heading of “illusion of technique.” the idea that we can do anything, we can manipulate the world to match our desires, thus we control meaning and truth. Yet this only applies to one form of knowledge, science, and all other forms will all but wither away. This is because science feeds technology, the basis of manipulation and control.

In popular terms, the site “debate.org” has a debate on the question “is science the only source of true knowledge.” That should at least reflect the fact that people are asking the question. Their straw poll, which is of course not scientific and not representative, shows 44% of people who visited the sight, says yes science is the only form of true knowledge.” 56% say “no.” It’s true that even with a specialized computer going audience the ‘no’s’ have it, yet 44% is a large percentage.[13] They quote Hume: 
“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”[14]

They try to deny the validity of the term but we have major publishing figures using it and they deny anyone thinks that way but half the atheists in a poll do think that way even though an unscientific poll that is not no one, I have disproved Everything they said. The term has some vegness it is's like saying that Trump is a fascist, it has to be pieced together out of things peple say. But they so say scinetistic things.

Sources

[1]Marion-Webster’s dictionary online, “Ideology,” URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ideology, accessed 9/19/13.

[2]Dictionary.com, American Heritage new Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. 3d edition, Houghton Mifflin Company 2005, online resource, URL: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ideology, accessed 9/19/13

[3]Jospeh J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, New York, New York: Vintage, 2005, 238.Adams was explaining to Jefferson that he had been too idealistic in accepting all the French revolution has to offer, and the meaning of the term “ideology” indicated a false infatuation with things only partially understood; that Jefferson was carried away with the romance and was too open to the entire program of the philosophes without understanding it well enough.

[4]Terry Eagleton, Ideology, London, Brooklyn New York: Verso, 1991, 2.Eagleton is professor of English at Lancaster University (England) and is a major literary critic.

[5]Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” London Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 20 (19 October) 2006, 32-34.

[6]James Felton Keith, “Integrationalism: Essays on the Rationale of Abnundance.” Detroit, Michigan: Think ENXIT press, no date listed, online URL: http://books.google.com.br/books?id=dgOinwwR-FoC&pg=PA12&dq=%22According+to+physicalism,+the+language%22#v=onepage&q=%22According%20to%20physicalism%2C%20the%20language%22&f=false, visited 1/11/11.

[7]
George Richmond Walker, “Art, Science, and Reality,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Sept. 1964, 9. on line version: URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=xgcAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=science+is+the+only+form+of+knowledge&source=bl&ots=MZJYHUMFpM&sig=pB9flvCGNQnTWSGqGUH4jsiYbhg&hl=en&ei=F0LuTbqDMo6CtgeRqaSYCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=science%20is%20the%20only%20form%20of%20knowledge&f=true visited 1/11/11

[8]
Mark Thomas, “Why Atheism?: History and Development of Science and Scientific Naturalism.” Web page URL:http://www.godlessgeeks.com/WhyAtheism.htm visited 1/11/11.Thomas apparently has some kind of job in computers and belongs to an organization called “godless geeks.” I quote him because his view illustrates the thinking at the popular internet level.

[9]
Answers.com, Wiki Answers.”Is Science the Supreme Form of Knowledge?” online resource: URL:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_science_the_supreme_form_of_knowledge, visited 1/11/11.

[10]Stephen M. Barr, “Re-Telling the Story of Science,” Op cit.

[11]

Byron K.  Jennings, In Defense of Sciemtism,  MUSQUOD (April 9, 2015)

[12] Peter Augustine Lawler, “Defending the Humanities,” The Weekly Standard, Jun 17, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 38, 2013.  from the Online copy Jan 1, 2014

[13] Debate.Org, “Is Science the Only True Source of Knowledge?” owned by Juggle, LLC   online resource:

http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-science-the-only-source-of-true-knowledge  accessed 12/31/13.

[14] Ibid.