Scientism

[From an email...]

I may have mentioned this before, but this is something that is good to know and to remember:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

What atheists are doing these days is not recognizing that science has boundaries and is not able to speak on things outside its boundaries. The definitions in that Wikipedia article are good, but you have to read them carefully to see what they are saying.

Basically scientism is a *belief*, like a religious belief, and it puts science as the ultimate authority in all matters of enquiry including faith or anything metaphysical. This is not the role of science, and science is incapable of such a role.

Also, scientism is a *border crossing* violation in the sense of "any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews)."

Also, labeling what atheists like Richard Dawkins believes as scientism "is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things"

"In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth."

Biological determinism is similar. I.e. saying faith is merely a function of a certain part of the physical brain, the same with love or whatever.

You can see the shallowness of this view. Inspiration becomes non-existent. These are the same people in academia who consider any classic work of literature to be a fraud and no better than a modern day romance novel or whatever.

Why are these shallow people on the march with such zeal these days? End times phenomena. The village idiots are inspired by the spirit of the devil to assert themselves... /ct