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Topic

Scientism and Secularism (book)

Jordan Peterson interviews Larry Krauss on scientism

Krauss’s claims — it’s not just possible but “quite likely” that our universe arose from nothing, “no space, no time, and maybe no laws.” At the least, we can say confidently that it has all the properties we would expect to observe in a 14-billion-year-old universe that came into being “spontaneously, without any supernatural shenanigans.” — are clearly ridiculous. “Nothing” is not an account of anything and there is no way we could know what a universe from nothing “should” look like. Peterson is being too kind here. Read More ›

Why neither weak nor strong scientism can ground ethics

Paul Copan: Science has built-in limitations, but some moderns have placed a burden on science that it cannot—and was never meant to—bear. Theology, philosophy, and other sources of knowledge not only help supplement what science can show, but they can also enrich our study of science. Read More ›

J.P. Moreland on Darwinism and “reverse intelligent design”

Our philosopher-photographer friend Laszlo Bencze sends us some thoughts on J. P. Moreland’s recent book, Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology: – (O’Leary for News) I just finished my reading of this book and I think it’s an excellent analysis of the issues which undergird evolution, namely that science and only science can provide knowledge about the world. This view, known as “scientism” relegates both philosophy and theology to the realm of personal opinion where both may be safely ignored. Of course, as Moreland points out, this position is self-refuting because all statements about the power and purpose of science are necessarily philosophical statements: The irony is that strong scientism is a philosophical statement, expressing an Read More ›

J. P. Moreland: How scientism leads to post-modern relativism

From an interview with J. P. Moreland, author of Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (2018): RC: How does science differ from scientism and why does it matter? JPM: Claims of science—water is H20, electro-magnetic fields behave in such and such a manner—what science is limited to. But scientism is a philosophical claim about science, not a claim of science. Scientism is a theory of the nature of knowledge (it can only be obtained through physics, chemistry and the other hard sciences) and limits of knowledge (based on the nature of knowledge, it is limited to the the hard sciences and absent from all other fields, e.g. religious claims or ethical assertions). These types of claims Read More ›