New Godless: Science is the Only Game in Town
Godless atheists are becoming more and more vocal - not just about their atheism, but also about their critiques of theism, religion, faith, and traditional dogmas. This makes believers uncomfortable because they aren't accustomed to being put on the spot so publicly and directly. Even worse, godless atheists tend to rely heavily on science, a system and methodology which cannot be dismissed.
According to the New Statesman:
What unites the New Godless ... is the idea that there is no reason to believe in any supernatural being, and that the absence of any such entity is no bar to humanity constructing its own systems of morals and ethics. For their armoury they do not rely on the theological arguments which exercised Aquinas and Augustine. Facts and scientific method are their weapons. [...]
The charge levelled at the New Godless is that, with their rigorous reasoning, testing and experimentation, they are making a religion out of the scientific method. “It’s an all-purpose, wild-card smear,” retorts Dennett. “It’s the last refuge of the sceptic. When someone puts forward a scientific theory that they really don’t like, they just try to discredit it as ‘scientism’. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town.”
Science has proven to be a far more reliable methodology for obtaining knowledge of our world than anything else which humanity has ever come up with. Science isn’t perfect, obviously, because it’s a human system and humans are not perfect. It is, however, much better than anything else and over the course of time what it provides us gets increasingly better as well. This makes it very difficult for supporters of religious traditions to respond because there isn’t much room to attack science — at least, not if you want to live in the modern, scientific world.
Understanding Atheism & Atheists:
Wednesday May 10, 2006 | comments (0)
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