The Problem with Atheists

If you've seen one of them on a forum you've seen a dozen. I'm talking about those perpetual naysayers, the atheists.

They're the backbone of everything liberal in this society. They claim to be "skeptics" but, unlike true skeptics, their skepticism does not extend to the modern secular dogmas which define our society. Question those and they'll treat you as though you're an idiot simply for asking, as though science has magically given them all the answers at their fingertips.

Their position is built on a single premise. They believe that science has conclusively proven a material universe bereft of anything more. They preach that because science has given us many important answers about the workings of the material world around us that it has also given us all the answers regarding the extent of reality as a whole.

The fact of the matter is this entire grand atheist argument is built on very shaky circular thinking. Science has not proven that material existence is all there is. If it had, it could rightfully be accused of begging the question. The fact of the matter is that science, for what are actually very good reasons, assumes from the very outset that material existence is all that there is. Science is a study of natural phenomena and thus must exclude phenomena which aren't natural from its focus. This is actually all well and good -- the study of one thing shouldn't overlap with the study of another.

The error of atheists who appeal to science to support their position, however, is that they draw direct conclusions from what are arbitrary beginning premises. Science limits the scope of the data it collects to the material, physical world and then atheists complain that there's no scientific evidence of anything beyond the material, physical world. The very notion that atheists are trying to prove is assumed from the very outset by the definition of science -- it's utterly impossible for any area of study to prove that which lies outside its scope. It would be akin to trying to prove the laws of astrophysics through the study of marine biology.

The error is compounded by skeptical attempts to disprove supernatural phenomena through scientific lab experiments. Scientific experiments are based around the notion that natural phenomena are measurable and that good natural theories are able to predict results readily. That's well and good for the study of natural things. It doesn't follow, however, that what necessarily applies to the natural must also apply to the supernatural. Natural phenomena have natural causes. Supernatural phenomena have supernatural causes which aren't readily available at the whim of the experimenter. For an experiment to be valid a scientist must control for every variable. That's possible when all the variables are natural. The folly, however, is in assuming an experiment can control for factors it doesn't understand, especially when the existence of those factors is precluded by the very definition of the methods themselves!

Science will never prove the existence of the supernatural. It isn't because the supernatural doesn't exist or can't be studied but rather because science deals strictly with what is natural. To use a lack of scientific evidence as the reason one conforms to a materialistic understanding of the world is to commit a grave fallacy of reasoning in how one defines one's understanding of the world around oneself.

Science is a valuable tool. Although I would deny that we live in a purely material world I would admit that the physical, natural world around us has certain properties . Those properties are worth our study. Science forms very strong theories based on the data it collects to understand how the world around us works. A theory is far more than a mere hypothesis but it is absolute dogmatism to treat theories as absolute facts, as atheists are often wont to do. The reasons for this are simple. Science, by its definition, precludes the existence of non-natural phenomena and thus cannot take them into consideration when formulating its theories. Furthermore, theories inevitably bump up against walls in the data which have to be explained away with what are ultimately hypotheses. Scientific theories, while strongly backed by data, haven't been handed down from above by some sort of scientist pope and aren't infallible. Good scientists are well aware of the limits to the theories they espouse.

Atheists, on the other hand, feel comfortable using a method which, from the outset, admits that theology is outside its scope as the very foundation of what amounts to their theology! It's amazing how they can twist their minds into knots to convince themselves that they're somehow being the intellectually honest ones when they appeal to science as the rationale for their lack of belief!