Recently, Harvard’s Steve Pinker has been getting it right, left, and centre, for his defense of scientism. Now, columnist Ross Douthat goes after materialist atheist neuroscientist Sam Harris for thinking that science can be an arbiter of moral values:
I have no problem, and nor should anyone, with Harris declaring that he favors a particular moral system, defining its terms to the best of his ability, and then explaining why he thinks scientific inquiry can help us maximize the end that system privileges. If you know what moral ends you’re driving at, then clearly science can be of assistance in your quest; the idea that the two spheres of inquiry never overlap is obscurantist and silly. But he would be much more persuasive on that narrower point if gave up on the broader one, and reconciled himself to the fact that his style of utilitarianism is not the self-evident and scientific foundation for all sensible moral inquiry that he believes it to be.
Scientism is the clown car of mechanistic materialism. People have lots of fun pointing to it and laughing. How many of them will still be here when the materialist’s combat vehicles move on dissenters and their damning evidence, now that is another matter.