Saturday, November 28, 2009

Atheists and Faith

Atheists are those most seriously tempted to devolve into scientism.
Atheists are the most susceptible to believing that science can and will tell us all things valuable.

To live like that takes a lot of faith.

To believe in scientism:
. One needs to have faith that our minds cannot be fooled.
. One needs to have faith that our senses are never wrong, and
. One needs to have faith that the people whose earlier research upon which our own beliefs rest never lied or made mistakes.

Examples you say? Freud, Kinsey, Mead, Rand, Haeckel, Galton, Skinner. Or how about East Asian cloning, or Piltdown Man. Or maybe you prefer ‘The Secret Gospel of Mark’ which turned out to be written by Columbia University historian Morton Smith. Or the common textbook icons of Darwinian evolution in action that have all been discredited:

. Haeckel’s faked embryo drawings, (Which I've been told have reappeared in Dawkins' latest book)

. Mutant four winged fruit flies that are in reality dysfunctional, and

. Peppered moths that in the real world don't rest on tree trunks; the photographs were staged.

. Oh and how about our high school biology textbooks that neglect to mention that the beaks of Darwin’s Finches returned to normal after the rains returned. No net evolution occurred. Like many species, the finch has an average beak size that fluctuates within a given range.

. Or how about Miller & Oparin “creating” life out of primordial earth’s ammonia, methane and hydrogen?

Of course the main reason that we shouldn’t naively believe in scientism is that scientism itself cannot be proven by science.

But that doesn’t stop atheists, for science is all they’ve got. Well, that and an incredible faith.

5 comments:

Chris Mackey said...

Here's a link that answers all the things you say have been discredited.

SCIENCE WORKS.

Thesauros said...

Thanks for the link. I'd never heard of Wells which I suppose is some sort of sin. I haven't read it all yet but I will.

I found this quote interesting and it leads me to ask. Do you know if it's true that Haeckel's drawings are in fact in Dawkins latest book?

"In the interests of forthrightness, one point must be conceded straight out: Haeckel's embryo drawings have no place in textbooks except as an example of how erroneous ideas can get tacked onto important truths and perpetuated even after being debunked (Haeckel's inaccurate drawings have actually been 'exposed' multiple times since the 1800's,"

Chris Mackey said...

Do you know if it's true that Haeckel's drawings are in fact in Dawkins latest book?

I'm about to go into town. If I spot the book, I'll flip through it and have a look.

Chris Mackey said...

I'm back.

Looked at the index, Haeckel is in there twice.
(Paraphrased from memory)
Dawkins says he admires Haeckel's draughtsmanship.

There is some drawings of crabs by Haeckel.

No embyro drawings by Haeckel.
There are photographs of embryos.

Chris Mackey said...

"draughtsmanship of crabs." not draughtsmanship in general.