CHARBONNEAU – Scientism has become the new religion
SCIENTISM HAS REPLACED religion as the source of truth.
Anyone claiming some fact will refer to science as a support for their argument. Scientism is so universal that it can even support opposite views.
Scientism is the belief that science is the foundation of reality. Like any belief system, scientism goes beyond the actual findings of natural science. The overextension of scientific authority has become so common that it now hides in plain sight, influencing every sphere of our lives from policing and economics to dating and psychology.
Like prescientific peoples, we have grown accustomed to the existence of our own shamans and wizards.
Religion served humanity well. It was a way of answering fundamental questions that we have wondered for millennia: “who made humans?,” “what are things made of ?,” “what is the purpose of existence?”
Because humans were exquisite tool-makers and made images of themselves out of clay and stone, a reasonable answer was that were created by a superior being.
Religion even justified our suspicions that we were superior animals. God conveniently told us so in Genesis 1:26:
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”
This model was shot down by Galileo, the father of astronomy, classical physics, and the scientific method. He paid a price for his audacity. Galileo was found guilty of heresy for claiming that the Earth revolved around the sun.
Scientism holds miraculous qualities just as prescientific religions did. What could be more astounding than the global village that Marshall McLuhan predicted; a village that connects all people worldwide to share information and experiences even when they are not physically close?
What could be more magical than the creation of semiconductors? The powerful computers we carry around in our pockets based on quantum physics.
However, scientism is more than the scientific method that Galileo proposed. It’s the belief that science holds the answer to every question, even questions that science doesn’t claim to the know the answer to such as: “what is source of beauty?,” “what does reality consist of?,” and “what is the foundation of knowledge?” Science is not about ethical beliefs, moral precepts, and philosophical ideals.
Modern scientism includes things that could never be studied by the scientific method. The age of the internet has provided a number of contradictory “facts.” If you want evidence that the landing on the moon by man in 1969 was actually staged, you can find it.
If you want to establish your scientific credentials that support the notion that the COVID pandemic was hoax, you can perform a few clicks and say “I have done my research.” Of course, what you have done is found a source that confirms your belief.
While scientism includes science, it also includes things contrary to the scientific method which proposes a hypothesis and rigorously tests it for accuracy.
The goal of the scientific method is not to prove yourself right but to advance science.
David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
The concept of beauty partly arises from symmetry when applied to a human face. The rest is mostly personal preference. Science showed us that.
Reality has at least two facets: the actual objective reality of things as they exist in the universe (with or without the subjective experience of an observer inside that universe) AKA the objective reality, and the other reality, which is unique and different for each of us – the reality of the observer, which is a subjective experience. Within our subjective reality, we can have agreement with others “e.g summer is hot”, but there’s no guarantee of that.
A “fact” cannot be so simply because it exists as a reference somewhere, as suggested by the moon landing example. Any dolt can dig up some reference to “prove” some conspiracy or ridiculous notion like flat earth. There may be actual facts leveraged to attempt to prove a flat earth theory, but that doesn’t make it true. It just means that behind every flat earth theory lies an idiot.
If there are two posted versions of events – that the moon landing happened vs it did not happen, one is fact, the other is farce.
The universe is governed my constants that we can observe. The false equivalency on display by the author goes like this: Because we don’t yet know, or might never know about something, that must mean there’s something beyond observable science going on, e.g. the notion of God.
Not so. Just because we can’t yet, or may never know a thing, does not mean it must follow the rules, laws and constants that make up the fabric of the universe and all things in it. If there is an afterlife, it’s based on all those attributes; you know, science. To think otherwise allows for magical thinking, such as gravity spontaneously disappearing at 12PM today, or Charlie Brown appearing in the flesh from your closet to cook you breakfast.
I feel this article is a thinly veiled attempt to advance a religious or creationist doctrine, by undermining the very thing that has brought humanity out of the dark ages.
Between the stench of Frankincense and Myrrh, the misinformation and the Soviet Goskomizdat, I feel like it’s time to make an exit from this place.
I’ll be here, there, everywhere. Like a superposition.
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