Scientism

[philosopher]

Don't be shy.. it's OK to have a religion....

I am a religious scient-ist (not scientist) myself. It means I believe in both Scientism AND religion.

But I make a clear distinction between the two. Like, you can be biologist and hobbyist. That doesn't mean you do biology as a hobby.

I am confident that Richard Dawkins is right in every aspect of explaining why religion is bad and wrong.
I am confident that Charles Darwin was right about Evolution.
I am confident the universe is self-explanatory without the need for a creator deity.

That doesn't kill my religion. At least, not for any of the above reasons.

I believe Jesus was right. Though, I do have strong doubts (as in: I do not believe) about his ressurrection and virgin birth. Likewise, I have doubts whether Jesus really was as compassionate and sympathic fellow as portrayed in mass-media or just another fundamentalist jew who believed in strict Jewish law.

It might well turn out that THE Jesus of Nazareth portrayed in the gospels, is just another fiction, at least relating to his compassionate supernatural-sympathy which I doubt any human can posess.

But to me, that changes nothing in percieving the Gospel-version of Jesus as THE God. Even if He is just fiction.
It changes nothing for my faith.

One might call this Christian Atheism.
But with "Christian" in front of Atheism, it really isn't atheism, is it?
And it cannot really be "Christian" either. Neither is it agnosticism.

[commonsense]

For Science claims there is no supernatural.

As I explained above, that is scientism. Science is simply trying to discover what we can without resorting to gods, it doesn't assume there are none.

Thanks for clarifying my comments.

My implication (that if Scientism proposes that there is nothing that cannot be explained without the supernatural, then Scientism is making the claim that there is no supernatural) is wrong.

Please excuse my typos (It’s for Its and Science for Scientism). The spasms of my hands and fingers are inordinately pronounced of late.

[commonsense]

I think Henry is overstating it by saying that Scientism is religion, but he is making a serious point. Science can be described as the project of understanding nature without reference to supernatural causes. Scientism is generally taken to be the belief that everything can be explained without supernatural causes. We don't yet know if that is true, so until we do, any such belief is an article of faith. A bit like religion, but without the god bit.

Science is the tool we use to understand the world.

Scientism is the belief that tool is applicable to 'everything'.

Science can explain the mechanism of the Flu, but cannot explain the comfort my kid experiences when I just sit with him quietly when he has the Flu.

The scientism-ist claims science can explain that comfort (which it cannot: Philo sez scientism "is reductionist at core", but to understand life (specifically human life) you can't reduce it to constituents cuz the human individual isn't the sum of his parts but is the sum of the idiosyncratic interaction of his parts. In other words: you got to talk to my kid to understand my kid's sense of comfort cuz you'll not find that comfort (or the one who's comforted) in a dissection.

Science can explain comfort. It just can’t measure nor describe your kid’s specific experience.

[Harbal]

I've noticed the lack of scientistics (adherents of Scientism, that is reductionist at core) on this forum. Why is it that Scientism is frown upon here?

I don't know what scientism is but if you are advocating it, that's a good enough reason to frown on it.

[philosopher]

I've noticed the lack of scientistics (adherents of Scientism, that is reductionist at core) on this forum. Why is it that Scientism is frown upon here?

I don't know what scientism is but if you are advocating it, that's a good enough reason to frown on it.

Why are you against me?

[Harbal]

Why are you against me?

Because the three posts of yours that I've read indicate you have a very simplistic view of the World. You appear to see only in black and white.

[philosopher]

Why are you against me?

Because the three posts of yours that I've read indicate you have a very simplistic view of the World. You appear to see only in black and white.

Oh the irony.

You said: "I don't know what scientism is but if you are advocating it, that's a good enough reason to frown on it. "

That's a black-white picture!

[A_Seagull]

Scientism is generally taken to be the belief that everything can be explained without supernatural causes.

So then presumably non-scientism is the belief that in order to explain everything supernatural causes must be invoked.

Yet supernatural things are those things that cannot be explained! Sounds like a contradiction to me.

Scientism rules!!

[uwot]

...presumably non-scientism is the belief that in order to explain everything supernatural causes must be invoked.

It's a bit like theism and atheism. Non-scientism, I suppose, is simply the lack of belief that science will ultimately explain everything. I think most scientists would be surprised if they discovered some phenomenon that could only be attributed to a supernatural cause, but very few would absolutely rule out any possibility.

[Dubious]

Scientism is generally taken to be the belief that everything can be explained without supernatural causes.

So then presumably non-scientism is the belief that in order to explain everything supernatural causes must be invoked.

Yet supernatural things are those things that cannot be explained! Sounds like a contradiction to me.

It's not a contradiction if you don't try to explain it, i.e., the supernatural. The contradiction occurs in its explanation.

[Greta]

Not so long ago in human history some disorders and bacterial and viral infections were widely considered to be caused by possession.

To be fair, it's possible that supernatural things - leakages between dimensions or whatever - exist but are rare, ephemeral and too spontaneous to be measured under controlled conditions, with the majority of claims being untrue. That is possible. It's also possible that what are posited to be other realms can be explained by other means.

The beauty of being a science fan rather than a theist is the ability to cheerfully admit that you don't know things without feeling that you'll be excluded, damned or scorned. In scientific circles, exclusion and scorn are more likely to come to those erroneously claiming to know things. While it's true that some science fans take a quasi-religious approach to it, they are the secular LCD, equivalent to the religious LCD of literalists and creationists. It would be wrong, both analytically and morally, to judge either approach to life by its least able members.

Fundamentally, the religious and scientific ways of doing things are different. Religion is basically the science of antiquity, operating from a position of assumed knowledge with an associated quest to understand why this assumed situation is as they believe it to me (or, very often, try to believe because the myths stretch credulity to breaking point). Science, by contrast, operates from a position of emerging, rather than assumed, knowledge.

People become confused between the two - treating unsubstantiated and more substantiated beliefs as the same. To some extent the confusion about comes because in all areas of coordinated endeavour is at least some groupthink and unquestioning acquiescence, but that is just one aspect of religiosity.

There is also an element of rhetorical gaming in the claims about science being a religion because many theists have been stung by atheist claims that they are gullible. Thus theists routinely claim that secularists are just as unquestioning and worshipful of science which, as explained above, is not true.

[A_Seagull]

...presumably non-scientism is the belief that in order to explain everything supernatural causes must be invoked.

It's a bit like theism and atheism. Non-scientism, I suppose, is simply the lack of belief that science will ultimately explain everything. I think most scientists would be surprised if they discovered some phenomenon that could only be attributed to a supernatural cause, but very few would absolutely rule out any possibility.

Non-scientism is a belief in magic!

Scientism is not so much the belief that 'science will explain everything' as the belief that science can explain some things or perhaps most things or perhaps everything that is explicable.

[Impenitent]

to believe the future will resemble the past because it has always been that way is a leap of faith

-Imp

[A_Seagull]

to believe the future will resemble the past because it has always been that way is a leap of faith

-Imp

To believe that the future will not resemble the past also requires a leap of faith.

.... in any case it is not a requirement of a scientist to believe that the future will resemble the past.... in fact it usually turns out that the future is quite different from the past.

[uwot]

Non-scientism is a belief in magic!

Scientism is not so much the belief that 'science will explain everything' as the belief that science can explain some things or perhaps most things or perhaps everything that is explicable.

Well, you are free to define scientism as you wish, but as I said, I think it's like theism and atheism. There are hard atheists who believe they can rule out god, and there are soft atheists who simply don't believe in god. Similarly there are people who believe they can eliminate supernatural causes for everything and some who simply don't believe that there are supernatural causes. If you are claiming a soft version of scientism, then fair enough, I can subscribe to that, but I don't take the hard scientism view that supernatural causes are impossible. Most scientists accept that eliminating potential explanations a priori is not how science is done. As Greta says:

The beauty of being a science fan rather than a theist is the ability to cheerfully admit that you don't know things without feeling that you'll be excluded, damned or scorned.