See Alan Roebuck's "No Evidence for God?" in Intellectual Conservative for a useful treatment of the tendency of atheists to beg the question against theism by simply assuming, without basis, something like naturalism, materialism, or positivism to be true -- in other words, assuming the natural/material/empirically observable world is all there is.
While you're at it, check out one atheist's near-perfect instantiation of this tendency when he challenges theists to debate him... on a few conditions:
* By "knowledge and facts" I mean factual, scientific proof. No personal opinions, appeals to revelation, quoting the bible, no arguments purely from quoting an authority without actual evidence, personal/second-hand stories that cannot be confirmed, and no "philosophical bullshit.” **
** By "philosophical bullshit" I am referring to the fact that philosophy is not the most reliable method of getting at the truth. The sciences and empiricism are the most reliable methods of getting at the truth, not simple thought experiments, or philosophizing.
Of course, whether or not science is the fullest description of reality is precisely what is at issue here; taking it off the table simply begs the question against theism. And the claim that science alone is the basis of all knowledge is at once a philosophical assertion and a nonscientific one (as all epistemological claims necessarily are) -- and thus is simply self-refuting. The only way to get around this irreconcilable contradiction is to indulge in what Voegelin called the prohibition of questioning, a better example of which I couldn't have asked for.
Whoa, there's plenty of stuff in that guys' blog that qualifies as "philosophical bullshit."
Whatever, man. At this point I am convinced that only a very small minority among these people are interested in fair debate. This is, in the end, a political situation: these people hate you, your lifestyle, your religion and your opinions, and they are doing everything they can to label all of your beliefs "inappropriate" and anathematize you.
Get with the program, bigot!
Posted by: Dirichlet | January 29, 2012 at 07:41 PM
The positivist assumption on the part of such individuals is that science has no truck with metaphysics, that it gets at the real, empirical stuff of the world without any overlaying philosophic confusions. This is perfect nonsense, as demonstrated perhaps most decisively in E.A. Burtt’s classic study, “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science”. The problem is worse than this, however, as the metaphysics – philosophic naturalism or materialism – is not posited from first principles or thought out on logically structured grounds, but rather carried along in consequence of an epistemic – and ultimately methodological – limitation.
In brief, the Baconian methodology pursued by science begets an epistemology, which in turn begets a metaphysics, one born not of truth but of inadequacy. As the mathematical physicist and Thomistic philosopher Wolfgang Smith has written, “…directed as it is to the objective of control, the Baconian enterprise is inherently designed to count, measure, and quantify….This methodological reductionism, however, does not presuppose, nor entail, an ontology; it is metaphysically neutral, one can say…as a rule the tendency to deny what science cannot grasp proves irresistible.”
Let me conclude with reference to Edward Feser’s linked articles, directly relevant to this topic, “Blinded by Scientism” and “Recovering Sight after Scientism”:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1174
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1184
Posted by: Peter S. | January 29, 2012 at 10:27 PM