SCIENTISM Is science opposed to the Catholic worldview? Definitions - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

SCIENTISM

Is science opposed to the Catholic worldview?

Definitions

• Science

– Science is an activity that seeks to explore the natural world using well-established, clearly-delineated methods. – Empirical – Quantifiable – Falsifiable

• Scientism

– A philosophical position which proposes that legitimate knowledge about reality can be attained solely through the scientific method. – Maintains that whatever cannot be studied by science, does not exist, cannot be rationally believed, or cannot be known about.

Examples of Scientism

• “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

–Carl Sagan

• “Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained

by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.” – Bertrand Russell

• “What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come

from? Did the universe need a creator? ... Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is

• dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern

developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” –Stephen Hawking

The Problems with Scientism

• Self-Defeating
• Limits the realm of rational inquiry
• Why is there something rather than nothing?

– A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing – Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, and some serious misunderstandings.

Does science disprove God?

• Depends on what “god” you are speaking about?
• The problem of anthropomorphism
• The Christian understanding of God

Resources for further study

• The MagisCenter: Catholic Answers to Science, Faith,

and Reason

– https://www.magiscenter.com/

• American Association for the Advancement of Science

– What is Scientism? By Thomas Burnett – https://www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics- and-religion/what-scientism

• Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and

Ronald Tacelli

• Science and Religion: The Myth of Conflict by Stephen
• M. Barr, Professor of Astrophysics