Unabridged version of guest column that appeared in the Sunday Gleaner of April 20, 2014 [http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140420/focus/focus7.html]  in response to Ian Boyne's column of April 13, 2014 [http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20140413/focus/focus2.html]

Onward Boynean straw men marching as to war

In a column entitled Why Science Is Not God, my friend Ian Boyne generates a storm of sophistry to blow down the straw men of “scientism” and the hubris of “scientistic atheists”.    This storm is powered by Ian’s theology that science and faith are both equally valid epistemologies and that there is no warrant for granting monopoly status to the former, to the exclusion of the latter.  For Ian, science and reason have epistemological limits that can only be remedied by resort to the epistemology of Christian deism.

 Ian thus relies on a classic god-of-the gaps theology to proclaim, inter alia, that:

(a) science is not the only measure of truth; and that gaps in science (such as the origin of life) can be filled by theistic explanations; 

(b) there are truths that reside outside of the purview or detection of science;

(c) science is incapable of proving things like objective moral values; and

(d) that a “fine-tuned” universe is evidence of godly provenance.

At heart of the matter is a battle over epistemology – what do we know, how do we know it.  Any epistemology that’s worth its salt must be able to demonstrate some fundamental properties, including the capacity to distinguish between truth and falsity.  As George Smith pointed out more than 40 years ago, for a proposition to earn the status of truth, it must be capable of being justified by evidence.  The proposition must also be internally consistent and be capable of being integrated into previously existing knowledge. Knowledge requires the twin processes of acquisition and verification; which, in turn, demand the application of reason (as opposed to faith).  Epistemology, as a branch of philosophy is, to my way of thinking, committed to the discovery of truth, and is not, nor can it be rationally concerned with defending a particular set of beliefs.   Of necessity this excludes theism as a valid epistemology, despite Ian’s contention that it is “philosophically robust”.   It’s worth noting that one of the major epistemological disqualifications of theism is its incapacity to distinguish between fact and fiction, a disability that is not shared by science.    In its arrogance, theism tends to regard itself as above the conventional probative requirements demanded of non-religious, scientific hypotheses.

Science is epistemology in action. Unlike theism it does not rely on revelation and faith to ground its findings, but uses the tools of observation, reason to systematically interrogate and map nature/reality in all its dimensions, including the dimension of moral values.  Science, unlike religion, operates on the principle of falsifiability, with its hypotheses, theories, and laws always being subject to review or repeal if new evidence so warrants.  By comparison, Ian’s “robust philosophy” of theism relies on being manacled, through faith, to un-falsifiable doctrines (such as the Adam and Eve origin of humanity) regardless of whether they’ve been comprehensively debunked by theories such as evolution.   Unlike scientific theories, theism has no explanatory or predictive power; and ultimately, must be dismissed as pseudo-epistemology at best.  In this regard, I like to think of theism as a species of “wishcraft” (to borrow a term from author Linda J. Falkner). 

Based on the foregoing, it is not at all arrogant to consider science as the only legitimate measure of truth; it is certainly far less arrogant than assuming, without evidence, that we humans represent the pinnacle of some deistic creation odyssey completed over seven days.

Ian, like many other theists posits a false dichotomy between science and morality. Despite Ian’s contentions to the contrary, science, in its broad sense, is not divorced from morality; and in key ways, serves to explain it in ways that religion, with its emphasis on divine absolutes, cannot.  As George Smith argues, there is indeed a “science of ethics” based on the proposition that (a) science is concerned with the discovery of, and classification of facts into a coherent, integrated system; and (b) ethics seeks to discover human values, and integrate them into such a system; and (c) that insofar as ethics seeks to discover and systematize factual knowledge of values, it is science.

It’s curious that Ian refers to “objective moral values”, without perhaps realizing that objectivity is one of the defining features of scientific inquiry in general, and the science of ethics in particular.   Ian contends that the inability of science to “prove” moral values reduces morality to a “social construct” or to “an evolutionary adaptive mechanism”.  Well Ian, that’s exactly what moral values are – as explained and understood by the science of ethics, with the help of other sciences, including biology and anthropology.  Non-human animals have also been observed to demonstrate ethical behaviour- seemingly without the supervision of any supernatural policeman.  Having disposed of these preliminary observations, I would argue that the science of ethics can, and does indeed guide us on matters of concern to Ian, including slavery, human trafficking, and the matter of robbing Keiran King of his theatre receipts or his payment for Gleaner columns.

Amusingly, Ian deploys, and at times, distorts the language of science to storm against the “hubris” of science, atheists, and rationality.  Citing Christian apologist William Lane Craig, he contends, “our one known scientifically confirmed universe is “exquisitely, minutely fine-tuned”.   He also implies that the degree of improbability involved in this fine-tuning process evidences some unseen deistic (Christian) creator.    First of all, “fine-tuning” is not a scientific concept – it’s a theological concept that has been desperately engrafted onto science by Christian apologists to shoehorn their god into his biblically ordained role of creator of the universe.   This of course violates Occam’s Razor (the principle of parsimony), which requires the elimination of premises and constructs that cannot be shown to be necessary for explanatory purposes.  

Secondly, “improbability” and “probability” are concepts from science – particularly the discipline of mathematics.   Probability is simply a human (scientific) measure of likelihood of a given event occurring or having occurred.  That measurement can only take place with regard to that which is measureable in the world of nature and reality, and not the wishcraft world of the supernatural.  In any event, where an improbable event has occurred, all that has been established is that an improbable event occurred; it does not establish the cause of such any event, much less establish deistic causality. 

Space does not allow for a detailed review of Ian’s storm of sophistry or to help clear the debris of the straw men left in its wake.  As a parting shot, it seems to me that the Goliath of Ian’s straw men resides in the title of his column ((Why Science Is Not God).  I don’t recall any “scientistic atheist” (like Keiran King) ever claiming the contrary. What has been claimed is that theism is not, nor can it ever be the epistemic peer of reason and science.  It’s as simple as that. 

Hilaire Sobers is an attorney-at-law, and co-host of the social media programmes Skeptically Speaking and Yardie Skeptics.  Email: hilaire.sobers@gmail.com.