Is Atheism Unscientific?

Well then, that would certainly make Hinduism "unscientific," wouldn't it?

 

"Non-different"??? Let me guess: you work for the government.

Empiricism is one of the principles of science, but all empirical endeavors are not necessarily scientific. An attempt to study the natural universe without empirical observation of its present and past behavior cannot be scientific. Of course, religion by definition postulates a supernatural universe which interacts with the natural universe. If this were true, it would falsify the status of the natural universe as a closed system. Since that is the underlying principle of science, claiming to falsify it without empirical evidence, as religion claims, is not only unscientific but antiscientific.

 

You're equating the "natural universe" with the "observable universe." There are lots of things in the natural universe that we cannot observe. Obvious examples are anything much smaller than a star in the outer reaches of our galaxy and things waaaay larger than that in other galaxies.

Moreover, since the whole purpose of the scientific method is to predict the behavior of the natural universe based on observations of its present and past behavior, it's important to note that "we," even collectively, cannot see any of the universe's past behavior prior to the era of trustworthy recordkeeping--inarguably not to any significant extent before the invention of the technology of writing made it possible for civilization's scholarship to be an increasingly reliable continuum. Wait, there's more: because of the lightspeed limitation, we cannot even see the present behavior of 99.9999... (my math yields around thirteen decimals) percent of the natural universe, because the light that's reaching us from out there is more than five thousand years old. Our view of the other side of our own galaxy is a hundred thousand years out of date!

In other words, except for earth and its neighborhood, whose past we can't see, we're looking at only extremely large-scale behavior of the rest of the universe only in the distant past. Our view of the natural universe is actually quite limited. The natural universe and the observable universe are not identical.

Nonetheless, by using the scientific method we have developed tools and procedures that allow us to extrapolate, from the behavior we've observed, a good many characteristics of all that unobservable behavior. On earth, geology gives us a magnificent view of the planet's physical past, and paleontology and DNA analysis give us a magnificent view of the lifeforms that inhabited it. In other parts of space, the lightspeed constraint has turned into an advantage, because we see utterly consistent behavior of matter and energy in all the places we can look and at all the times we can look. The natural laws we have derived hold true in a statistically enormous sample of times and places.

To use the language of the law since the language of science is terrible for communicating with laymen, our theories about the behavior of the natural universe have been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt by reasoning from the limited present and past behavior we have been able to observe empirically, through the humble capturing of light waves by our eyes as well as through other more complex but equally valid means of observation.

As for your assertion that the majority of the matter and energy in the natural universe will eventually move out to a distance from which we no longer capture any of its photons or other waves and particles: Clearly our reception of those "observations" will attenuate over time. Instead of being bombarded by photons from Galaxy X, we'll be hit by only one every few days, and that time lapse will increase. (And this is certainly verging off into a realm of physics in which I have no expertise: does the Uncertainty Principle say that there will truly be times in which no light from that galaxy hits earth? Are light waves that discrete? Do we even know?) But if we keep collecting and analyzing data, and keep deriving theories from it, while we're waiting for that to happen (billions or trillions of years hence, if I understand the prediction correctly), perhaps we'll find another way to predict the behavior of the parts of the universe which pass beyond yet another observational boundary. Who could have foreseen telescopes and fossils four thousand years ago, or writing, in an even more distant era?

"Ascientific" means "without science." Atheism is a perfect application of the Rule of Laplace, one of the basic tools of the scientific method: "Extraordinary assertions must be accompanied by extraordinary supporting evidence before we are obliged to treat them with respect."

Since science as we know it emerged as one of the tools of the Enlightenment, there has been no respectable evidence, either of observation or reasoning, to support the hypothesis that a supernatural universe exists, and furthermore that creatures or forces within it have the ability to affect the behavior of the natural universe.

Furthermore, all attempts to "prove" this hypothesis have themselves been "ascientific," to use your term. They fall into several familiar fallacies.

• Scatterbrained logic: "There are butterflies and they're so beautiful. So there must be a God."
• Instinct: "I've known since I was born that there is a God. How can you not know that as well?"
• Demand for proof of a negative instead of a positive: "Since you don't yet understand how abiogenesis works, that's proof that life was created divinely."
• Cognitive dissonance: "Even though the 'universe' is 'everything that exists,' I believe that God exists and that he is not in the universe."

After five centuries of this consistent failure to advance the hypothesis of a supernatural universe, during which everything we've learned about the natural universe consistently contradicts it, that hypothesis has passed into the category of extraordinary. Therefore, we are no longer obliged to waste our time entertaining the type of supporting evidence that is supplied, which barely qualifies as "ordinary."

Until some truly extraordinary evidence for theism is provided, we are fully justified in treating it with the disrespect it has earned.

And that, my friend, is scientific.

 

And what "data" supports theism? In science, "data" means empirical observation that can be repeated in the peer review process by someone who is not predisposed to believe the hypothesis being tested. Legends, instincts, hopes, the fairytales told by your parents, and the face of Jesus on a tortilla are not "data."

Huh? The only "authority" this atheist regards as superior is science, which is self-testing and self-correcting.

No, that's libertarianism. You're confusing my views on politics with my views on religion. Do your homework next time.

Everything requires evidence. Your statement is completely antiscientific. As such it does not belong in a place of science like SciForums, except as a textbook example of trolling.

You believe in God because humans are preprogrammed to believe in the supernatural. It's what Jung calls an "archetype." That's fine. But please don't dress up an instinct and try to pass it off as rational debate, much less scholarship.

 

Huh????? Science has four important words to say about the supernatural, and that's all the commentary the entire topic merits: "Show us the fucking EVIDENCE!" (One of those five words was mine.)

The only "evidence" for the supernatural is the synapses generating that belief, which are hard-wired in our brains through accidents of evolution. It's easy for primitive people to assume that the resulting instinct is as valid as the instincts generated by other hard-wired synapses, such as the urges to procreate, flee from predators, and avoid stepping off a cliff. Fortunately we've moved beyond that. (Well some of us have anyway.) We've developed science, which can help us distinguish the bullshit from reality. Not to mention helping us invent parachutes. We're no longer hapless slaves to our instincts.

It's far past the time to dump the particular bullshit-instinct of believing in the supernatural. Especially today, since a few hours ago yet another in an endless series of wars was escalated between two communities with competing manifestations of that instinct.

Some primitive instincts are harmless. This one again and again threatens to destroy civilization. Fuck it.

 

I confess to not being a scholar of the history of science, although I'm the only person I know who refers to "the Rule of Laplace" rather than "that thing Carl Sagan said." Nonetheless, I'm also not a scholar of the history of automobiles, but I understand the principles they're based on and I know how to use them.

As for "the basis of scientific methodology," I make it clear that my statement of the fundamental principle that underlies science is my own, yet no career scientist has ever faulted it:

• The theory that the natural universe is a closed system, whose behavior can be predicted by other theories we derive, by logical reasoning, from empirical observations of its present and past behavior.

It's a condensed definition of the scientific method, covering the basics but not delving into the minutiae like peer review and Occam's Razor. If you know a scientist who disagrees with it, please ask him to log in.

Huh? Five centuries of increasingly scientific observation of the universe has consistently yielded an understanding of how it works, and we have tested that understanding energetically without ever falsifying it. How much more evidence do you need that empiricism is the path to objective truth?

Empiricism is the philosophy that knowledge arises only through experience and evidence, especially observation, rather than from innate ideas such as faith and other instincts. That is not a complete statement of all the principles of science, but it is one of the most important ones.

I'm not quite sure which concluding statement from which post you're referring to, but it's probably this one:

Empiricism is not a science, but it is a tool of science, just like mathematics. If a hypothesis violates either the rules of empiricism or the rules of mathematics, then it is crackpottery and not science.