Reply #70: here's an interesting post from another thread [View All]

I didn't write this, another poster did, but I found it interesting

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x3512#3672

scientism--roughly the view that the only possible valid forms of knowledge or rationally warranted belief are those yielded by the methods of the natural sciences; and that the only real entities are those which are posited by the natural sciences. Scientism is not itself science, and it's not proven or provable by science. It's a philosophical worldview. There are many strong philosophical arguments against scientism, and most of the atheists I've encountered have not been familiar with or particularly good at understanding the philosophical critique of scientism.

An abiding memory is seeing Richard Dawkins debating on a TV show with the philosopher Mary Midgeley, the biologist Stephen Jay Gould, and the neurologist Oliver Sachs. At one point, Midgeley's face was a picture of baffled and highly embarrassed horror, as it was becoming increasingly clear that Dawkins really didn't have a clue about the philosophical problems with scientism, nor even some of the notions that are common to philosophy of science 101. She was sitting there with an expression on her face that suggested she was thinking, "This guy doesn't know what he's talking about"---and I could sympathize with Midgeley, as I too was shaking my head in disbelief at Dawkins' apparent philosophical illiteracy.

Thankfully not all atheists are philosophically naive adherents of scientism. There are non-scientistic versions of naturalism which are not as vulnerable to criticism as scientism is. With these people it's possible to have interesting and fruitful discussions about the nature and origins of life, consciousness, reason, morality, meaning, and the apparently fine-tuned structure of what Brian Greene has called The Elegant Universe. When these sorts of atheists say that they find no evidence for theism, I do scratch my head a bit, since to my way of thinking, evidence for theism is fairly readily apparent if you're prepared to define evidence in a non-scientistic way.

It strikes me at any rate that all the phenomena associated with reason and with value, as well as the intelligibility and order of the physical universe, are such as to suggest an 'inference to best explanation' type of reasoning (what the American philosopher C. S. Peirce called 'abductive inference') that quite naturally posits the theistic hypothesis as the best candidate explanation. And if it's ok for physicists to abductively infer such intrinsically invisible theoretical entities as the electromagnetic field, or curved space, or even the invisible laws of physics themselves to explain electromagnetic, gravitational and other physical phenomena, then I don't see any great difficulty in principle in abductively inferring, as the ultimate reality or ground of being, a physically invisible, mind-like, rational, moral consciousness, and then comparing this hypothesis with competing hypotheses which offer alternative explanations of the same phenomena (such as materialist, or Platonic explanations).

I often think that some atheists are operating with a concept of God which is not one that I, as a theist, would regard as adequate for my own thinking about God. And so I find myself saying, well, if that's what you mean by the term 'God', then I don't believe in that 'God' either. When we talk about, and more importantly experience Reason, or Goodness, I personally find it literally incredible that these phenomena can have arisen, or be adequately explained, on the basis of chance movements of impersonal matter-energy, and am immediately disposed to think that Reason and Goodness must be ontologically ultimate in some way. And I guess I just don't see what's so hard to accept about that. And since we never encounter reason and value phenomena independently of mind, then I hypothesize as a reasonable explanation thereof, that the rational moral minds we are familiar with must bear some relationship of analogy to that ontological ultimate Reason/Goodness.

Some atheists I've encountered seem to think of God as being like a ghost, or a fairy, or a mythical man in the sky. But I want to say that God for me is better understood as eternal, uncreated Reason and Goodness---a pure, unlimited Rational and Moral Consciousness that pervades the entire world but exists independently of it, and transcends it. To say that such a reality makes no sense and does not exist, to me must mean that reality makes no sense or is ultimately unintelligible. And that idea itself---the ultimate unintelligibility of reality---to my mind, makes no sense. That is one reason that I find atheism literally impossible to believe. It suggests instead that material reality is all there is, and it just happens to be here or is necessitated by some impersonal cosmic law, for no reason or purpose, and somewhat surprisingly is such as to produce life, consciousness, rational thoughts, moral experience, consciousness of profound beauty, and profound experiences of meaning and love and value---but all by accident, not by conscious, rational design. To me this suggestion is far more irrational than the idea that if you see a sign that says WELCOME TO SCOTLAND while riding on a train from London to Glasgow, it most likely got to be there by some random, accidental amalgamation of atoms, rather than by the deliberate causal act of a rational, and hence moral, and hence personal being.

Perhaps more conceptual work is needed on both sides. Even from a scientific viewpoint, I think more and more we are finding that notions such as 'information' are fundamental and irreducible. Philosopher David Chalmers talks about matter being information from the outside, and consciousness being information from the inside. One can think of God as self-subsistent Reason--one can conceptualize God as unlimited, pure information communicating itself to itself, which just is, or which eternally generates, Consciousness, and therefore also Value. It generates Value (goodness, love, beauty, etc) because this unlimited self-communicating, self-revealing information is eternally united in harmony with itself, and thus is eternally One and Whole. (These concepts are also partly inspired by and suggestive of St Augustine's theology of the Trinity, which he suggests we try to grasp on an analogy with the operations of intellect/knowledge and will/love of the mind.) And if one runs with Chalmers' idea that information is matter from the outside, the reason we don't see God is not so much that God isn't physical---it's rather that God is infinite. There's just too much information for anyone looking at it from the outside to be see it---finite minds can only fully comprehend finite information. But inside it, it's infinite consciousness--God fully comprehends Godself-and thus all of reality is ultimately intelligible, because God is an unlimited act of rational understanding (or self-communicating information). (By the way, Chalmers is not a religious believer or theist.)

None of the above constitutes conclusive proof of God's existence in some mathematical or rigorous logical sense. But so what? Do we need conclusive scientific proof, or mathematical proof, or logico-philosophical proof that there are minds other than our own, who make welcoming signs for people travelling to Scotland, and with whom we can form meaningful relationships, and to whom we have moral obligations---that we should love our children, for instance?

Now, I think that some atheists can come with me this far---that it is at least not irrational to believe that something akin to Reason has some ultimate ontological status. But they refuse to identify this with God or with a Personal Mind. I call these atheists, Platonists. Again, I think that we experience reason only in association with minds, and never as an independent Platonic entity. And we never experience Platonic entities (such as mathematical equations) just by themselves causing anything. We experience our own minds as causal---we decide to lift up our arm, and up it goes, etc. So further philosophical argument can be adduced. But if I get an atheist to the point of being a Platonist, I'm usually content with that, and will stop there, because I think the only thing that will definitely take you beyond atheistic Platonism into full-blown theism and religious faith is religious experience.

The common kinds of fundamental moral experience are, to my mind, akin to the type of non-scientistic reasons we all of us have to believe certain things that are of fundamental importance to our lives. And there are plenty of similar kinds of reason for thinking that theism is a rational belief system in this sense. But more structured logical reasons can also be given. Another abiding memory is listening to Alvin Plantinga give a lecture at Oxford about 17 years ago entitled "Two Dozen (Or So) Theistic Arguments", and I was pleased to find that the notes for that lecture are available online.