“You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”
walker percy
Believe the Science
Popular culture bombards us with the admonition to ‘believe the science.’ As a slogan, it’s catchy, if only because it catches us off guard, often leaving us defensive if not defenseless in response.
Who can argue against all that humankind has accomplished in the name of science, from revealing the invisible forces holding together galaxies and atoms, to unlocking the genetic code for the cure and prevention of disease, to creating virtual worlds by manipulating electrons with semiconductors and software?
The sheer volume and pace of technological achievement over the past century, even just the past decade, boggles the mind. We are left to wonder whether there is anything that science cannot do. It is understandable, therefore, that science has become drunk with success, even to the point of believing its own bluster.
Scientism is the belief that science, through the scientific method, is the best and only way to know truth and discover reality. By definition, this view denies the existence of God, to the point of asserting that science is incompatible with the very notion of God or anything else beyond the knowable natural world and physical universe.
Proponents of scientism revel in reminding the world that they don’t believe in ‘sky fairies’ or ‘imaginary friends’ (presumably referring to God, Jesus, and any number of deities ignorantly lumped together into a perceived monolith of religion), perfectly comfortable that Darwin is the only explanation they need to answer questions such as, ‘how did we get here?’
These proponents sit atop the ivory towers, and the rest of us look all the smaller by comparison. They are the ones who do the asking, and so are not used to being questioned, not even by themselves.
For example, the core position of scientism is that the only things that can be known are the things that are discoverable and provable by the scientific method. They know this, despite the fact that such a statement is neither discoverable nor provable by the scientific method.
The uncomfortable realization of the intellectually honest proponent of science uber alles is that ‘I believe science’ is a belief, and like other beliefs has a statement of faith. To a certain extent, science is defined by the need to explain all things, to be able to unlock an understanding of the entire universe and the physical laws that govern it, without any gaps. And yet we know from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems that is not possible.
Nonetheless, science persists, blindly and undeterred, under the assumption that there will always be an explanation to be discovered and articulated. Scientism’s statement of faith is that, “[f]or every fact, there exists an explanation as to why that fact is a fact.”[1] There are two major problems with this statement of faith, both of which are routinely ignored.
The first is Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, standing for the proposition that truths exist that cannot be proven, which means there is not always an explanation that can be arrived at from within the system. Incompleteness tends to be glossed over, either because no one will notice due to the intractability of Gödel’s theorems themselves, or because of the misguided belief that they apply only to some obscure area of formal mathematical logic.
The second problem, being more obvious and graspable, and thus often ignored completely, is the problem of first cause. While in theory every event in the physical world has one or more causes that can be explained, and each of those causes has a cause, and so on, eventually we must arrive back to a cause that had no cause, which is a first cause.
Science has nothing to say about an uncaused cause, nor can it. What caused the Big Bang that created the universe? Perhaps some cosmic bubble that burst, but then what caused that? Even if you believe that the universe exists in a recurring expansion/contraction loop with the Big Bang resulting from a recently completed Big Crunch, that still doesn’t explain how all the matter and energy in the universe got there and into that cycle in the first place.
Rather than admit to limitations, scientism insists we chalk up the whole ‘first cause’ thing to a one-time event and suggest it never be spoken of again. Inconveniently, like a family secret thought well-kept, it turns out the ‘first cause’ problem pops up again and again, and not just applying to the creation of the universe.
First cause applies to other events that have no impetus, no driving force, no discernable cause, such as life emerging from no life, consciousness emerging from no consciousness, and entirely new species of organisms emerging without intermediates linking to prior species, despite the insistences of the theory of evolution.
Typically, scientism will slap the ‘occurred by random chance’ or ‘natural selection’ label on such events and move on. For a discipline that prides itself on being endlessly curious, probing, and skeptical, scientism sure doesn’t seem to want to train that curiosity back on its own assumptions.
You Tell Me that it’s Evolution
The topic of evolution, and what we understand and misunderstand about it, is one that deserves a book all to its own. One excellent example is Darwin’s Doubt by science philosopher Stephen C. Meyer, which makes a compelling case that the leap of faith from (A) observing variation due to mutation and natural selection of traits within a species to (B) concluding the same mechanisms are responsible for one species evolving into another, must cross a chasm that is physically, genetically, and mathematically impossible to cross given the mere billions of years available to generate the vast diversity of life through random chance.
Even Darwin had no explanation that could account for events like the Cambrian Explosion, a period of sudden emergence of massive varieties of species not linked to anything that came before. Darwin knew that no evidence explained the Cambrian Explosion, but he trusted that new evidence would ultimately emerge to clear things up. It never did.
Despite the fact that the same doubts about the theory of evolution of species by natural selection that exist today have existed from the very beginning of the theory, we are told it is impolite to ask questions, and that we should ‘trust the science.’
G.K. Chesterton understood the gap in evolutionary theory in the early 1900’s, stating, “But evolution is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else.”[2] The limitation of science that proponents of scientism are reticent to admit is the inability to pierce the veil of first cause, a limitation that evolutionary theory shares.
“Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.”
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p. 14
The Realm of Science
It should go without saying that the realm of science is limited to the observable world. Popular culture today believes, mistakenly, that science is answering the big questions because it believes there is nothing beyond the reach of the questions science asks. If what you can observe is all there is, then the questions you ask about what you observe seem quite consequential.
In truth, science can only address the little questions because the universe, like any system, does not contain within itself everything needed to prove everything about itself. This is by necessity, as demonstrated by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
“[T]he world does not explain itself, and cannot do so merely by continuing to expand itself.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 139
The inability of the universe to explain itself is not cured by merely adding newly discovered knowledge, just like Gödel incompleteness cannot be fixed by expanding the set of axioms.
Scientism often appears to be puffing itself up by touting the achievements of science and technology while belittling the roles of religion and philosophy, even to the point of denying that religion and philosophy have anything to say at all.
It is revealing to note how much effort scientism puts into trying to demonstrate that science cannot coexist with religion, whereas religion is perfectly fine coexisting with science. If you don’t believe that religion supports coexisting with science, that only goes to show how steeped in scientism our modern culture truly is.
Scientism’s hubris lies in thinking so highly of what science has accomplished when it has come no closer to answering the eternal question of ‘why.’ Indeed, scientism has painted itself into a corner by denying that ‘why’ is even a valid question. For instance, consider the question of why the universe exists at all. “To say that the universe just is, as Stephen Hawking has said, is to reject out of hand any further question.”[3]
Science recognizes that the universe exists because we observe it, while at the same time scientism hides its ignorance about how the universe came to be. Without a hint of the irony, scientism advises the rejection of faith in a Creator and the acceptance (as a matter of faith, no less) that the universe ‘just is.’
“It is absurd…to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing; and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 139
What could be more prideful than declaring yourself the apex while disallowing the notion of any greater power just because you say so. That is like a dictator whose first action after rising to power by virtue of eloquent speaking is to remove the freedom of speech.
Scientism wants to deny the existence of God because to do otherwise would be an admission that there are questions science cannot answer and that there are truths science cannot reach.
Truth or Consequences
The acolytes of scientism attack metaphysical and spiritual things, like mystery and paradox, because they value the certainty of knowledge more than the truth. By criticizing the shortcomings of metaphysics, they are lifting their own ideas up only in comparison to putting others down, thus advancing their position by negation.
What they are really doing is redirecting attention away from science’s inability to answer spiritual questions. Instead of owning the limitations of science and having a dialog, scientism is content to seek schadenfreude as it seeks pleasure derived from tearing down the spiritual. This is reminiscent of the C.S. Lewis quote about wanting to believe the worst about our enemies.
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper (about your enemy). Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The essence of science’s limitations is that science is contained within the universe and is therefore smaller than the universe. The essence of scientism’s hubris is that it professes to value observing and proving above believing, all while pretending that it has no beliefs.
The nineteenth century mathematician and philosopher W.K. Clifford said, “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”[4] But this misrepresents how reason and science work, particularly when creativity is needed.
Often intuition is the first to discern truth, or at least the strong possibility of truth, and then evidence confirms it (or not). Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which introduced the strange notion that gravity is a warping of space and time, was a largely intuitional exercise, even to the point of Einstein needing to add an unexplained fudge factor, the ‘cosmological constant,’ so that the math would work out.
This was long before observable evidence existed for the phenomena Einstein’s theory so startlingly predicted. That sounds like belief preceding evidence to me. We should be careful not to be so dogmatic as to ignore indications when those indications do not yet add up to evidentiary sufficiency.
The point here is that science and faith can coexist, and should do so not only peacefully but in a way that encourages co-prosperity. The natural cannot contradict the supernatural because the supernatural envelopes it; the supernatural cannot contradict the natural because the natural resides within it.
“Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing discovered in nature could ultimately contradict the Faith. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing really deduced from the Faith could ultimately contradict the facts.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 73
[1] Rebecca Goldstein, Incompleteness, p. 21
[2] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p. 14
[3] David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, p. 88
[4] W.K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief”