RE: Is atheism a scientific perspective?
December 30, 2016 at 5:18 pm
(This post was last modified: December 30, 2016 at 5:27 pm by bennyboy.)
(December 23, 2016 at 2:46 pm)AAA Wrote: I was watching YouTube videos earlier today, and I came across a channel called SciencNET. I watched a few of their videos, then I realized that the whole channel is basically just clips of different atheists talking about religion. Many of the featured atheists such as a Christopher Hitchens, Matt Dillahunty, and Bill Maher are not scientists even in a broad sense of the word. Other channels such as ScienceToday and Science and Atheism have similar content.
It seems to me that these channels are trying to establish an association between science and atheism so that people will assume that atheism is the position of reason. I know there are plenty of religious channels that do the same thing, but I think we can agree that the atheistic worldview has done a better job of convincing the general population that it is the official position of science.
This is frustrating to me because the scientific method is so effective because it (in theory) prevents personal bias from influencing the data. When we begin to call philosophical positions scientific, we are potentially confusing the people who have a narrow schema of science. The distinction is almost never made between the empirical sciences that are based on observation, error propagation, and statistical description of results vs. the philosophical speculation that people come to based on the results of the empirical studies.
What do you guys think? Is atheism a scientific position? If so, why? If not, are you frustrated at the fact that there are people who seem to be trying to subliminally promulgate a philosophical position under the mask of science?
It's clearly not a scientific position, since almost all the early modern scientists were Christian, as are many modern ones. That being said, certainly science is about that which can be empirically observed, and that is material. You cannot observe God, or even the human mind.
"Everything we can measure empirically is material, therefore everything is material" is non sequitur and pretty poor logic, in my opinion. And the idea that Bill Maher is a scientist is just silly. That being said, any scientist who tries to use science in any form to support the God idea is probably not doing science correctly.
