When Science Becomes a Religion

Science, and the technology it breeds, is a dominating force in our culture. While science has extended our lives and made them more comfortable, its success also tempts us to place more value in it than it deserves.

As a society, we do more than accept the idea that science provides a means improve the human condition. We’ve actually been led to believe that science gives us the only way to know anything. This way of thinking about science is called scientism, which is more than a misplaced belief system. When science becomes a religion, it also becomes a dangerous ideology. Sadly, all of us have accepted this idea to some extent.

The important thing to understand about science is that it is nothing but a tool we use to understand the way our world works.  Science doesn’t really tell us anything on its own or as the infamous Frank Turek puts it:  “Science doesn’t say anything; scientists do.”

And therein lays the problem.  What we hear from scientists depend on their philosophy. What they believe about the world can’t help but be reflected in the conclusions they draw – it’s human nature. When we accept the notion that science is our only source of knowledge about the world, we fall prey to the presuppositions of scientists.  That is why I believe scientism is a religion, a belief system, a way of thinking about the ultimate questions in life.

The sciences of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology brought us direct knowledge that the universe had a beginning.  Some scientists view that as evidence for a Creator while others deny that it infers any such thing.

From biological sciences, we have learned incredible facts about the inner works of the cell.  Some scientists see a Designer in their microscopes and others see the complex outcome of an undirected, natural process.

Nuclear physics created radiation oncology to kill cancer but it also created the atom bomb. 

Science and technology showed us ultrasound images that confirm the reality of human life in the womb and then provide the techniques to destroy that life.

It was scientists who developed vaccines and who continue to find ways to cure genetically based diseases, but they also pursued eugenics, practiced forced sterilization and conducted experiments on humans in the Nazi Death Camps.

The big bang theory, evolution, and chemical fusion past iron have never been proven yet they are passed off as fact every day. No scientist has ever observed measured or reproduced a big bang. No scientist has ever observed a zebra manifest from a grasshopper much less reproduced the process, and no scientist has ever witnessed fusion past iron. Yet all of this is taught in public schools and higher education as an objective fact. The doublespeak is both amazing, and terrifying at the same time.

Scientism leads to the secularization of culture because it leads people to believe that no one can know anything about God, right and wrong. Thus, claims in religion and ethics can be ignored since no one can know whether those claims are reasonable or foolish.  Yet there are things science cannot explain such as the origin of the universe or the fundamental laws of nature or the origin of consciousness or morality or how the universe was fine turned for life.

Science has the potential to increase human flourishing but is no less likely to bring on an inconceivable level of human suffering. 

“The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.”  Freeman John Dyson

Source:  When Science Becomes a Religion by Bob Perry, Cross Examined.org; Reconciling Faith and Science by Franklin County Patriots

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