Oft have I pondered why it is that atheists rely on, or seem to rely on, or claim to rely so heavily on “science.” In my essay Omni-Science I pondered this question and concluded that science has nothing to offer atheism.
I now wish to succinctly state why there is no necessary correlation between atheism and science and why the atheist coercion of science leaves the atheist staring into a corner.
I constantly encounter atheists who understand that science only deals with one corner reality but, at the same time, consider it omniscient. In other words: science has a realm in which it functions but atheists attempt to appropriate it as a ubiquitous discerner.
Some claim that “people of faith” are turned off by science. Although this strikes me a sentiment that dies the death of one thousand qualifications, let us grant it for a moment: if that is the case, it perhaps does not have so much to do with actual science and its actual findings but due to statements such as those of Prof. PZ Myers who claims that science and atheism are inseparable (see here) or that science logically leads to atheism (statements such as these are very, very common).
Since science deals with only one corner of reality atheists who fill the void in their particular worldview, the void left behind by atheism, with science are sitting in a corner, staring at the corner, and asserting that this one corner is all there is to reality. Meanwhile, researchers in other fields are tapping them in the shoulder inviting them to turn around and see that there is more to reality than that little corner. But they refuse and the problem is this: science deals with the material, it observes the material, it seeks material causes for material effects, it constructs materialistic explanations and from this apparatus, which is meant to discern the material, atheists infer that the material is all that there is to reality.
Atheists oft claim that the more material causes that are found for material effects the more God retreats into the ethereal realm of the superfluous. In other words, some claim that God has been downsized from the God that is constantly active in the world to cause this and that material effect to a God who is far away and removed and perhaps intervenes on occasion and in an unscientific manner (miraculously).
However, this is a fallacious conclusion. At least when answering this charge from a Judeo-Christian perspective we should expect to find material causes for material effects because God created the material realm and its laws. This is why the scientific methods were largely concocted by scientists who believed in God-they believed that a rational God had created the material realm and that we could uncover how the material realm functions. If the universe is arbitrary we should not expect the cause and effect relationships, the laws of nature, the continuum or continuity that makes science possible.
Atheists fallaciously argue that one cannot scientifically or logically infer the existence of the supernatural until all material explanations have been exhausted. However, they not only reference the material explanations of which we know today but those which we may yet uncover. Thus, one cannot scientifically or logically infer the existence of the supernatural because some day (tomorrow, next year, a century, or millennia from now) a material explanation may be uncovered.
This is a “faith” based concept based on worldview adherence. It is the fallacy of expected future human omniscience. The argument is basically that one cannot scientifically or logically infer the existence of the supernatural until human beings learn everything that there is to know and everything about everything that there is to know-not until we know everything, how everything works, every cause for every effect and how everything interacts in every possible combination.
Therefore, atheists rely on, or seem to rely on, or claim to rely so heavily on “science” because it provides them cover, it provides them the facade of scientific respectability, it provides them an infinite digress.