Scientism Exposed: How It's Fooling Millions About God - FAS2601

Speaker A Has science disproved God? Can faith and science truly coexist? Can you believe in God and still trust scientific evidence? In this episode, we're going to uncover the crucial difference between real science and what is called scientism and why understanding this could completely transform how you view the evidence for God's existence. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Casey Vikirka. You joining me to discuss this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program. Speaker B Hello, Casey. Speaker A Dr. John has written a book, the Big Does God Exist? And in today's program, we'll be drawing on insights from this book. So, Dr. John, in your book. In this book, a crucial distinction is made between science and scientism. Can you explain firstly what scientism is and how it differs from legitimate scientific inquiry, especially when we're talking about questions of God's existence? Speaker B Right. Okay. So scientism is a position that this material world is all that exists, and that knowledge about this world and everything can be obtained by physical observation or actual observation, experiment and logic. Speaker A Okay. Speaker B And so that seems a very, very reasonable position. It's actually not based on evidence. It's based on faith. It's based on faith that there is no God and that there is no supernatural experience. Science, on the other hand, is the study of this physical world. So science, strictly speaking, doesn't make the claim to study spiritual aspects, for example, this area or the existence of a spiritual realm. Speaker A Right. So science is just looking at trying to understand the world around us, so to speak, all of material things, the things we can measure, perform experiments upon and that sort of thing. But you're saying that scientism is coming to that study with the premise that God doesn't exist. Speaker B Yes. Now, science and scientific study doesn't necessarily preclude the existence of God. And this is an important distinction to make because science is open, open to all these things. But really the focus is on studying, understanding how this material world. And the distinction is that science allows for supernatural intervention. Speaker A Okay, yeah. Speaker B This is the other thing. And because it admits, okay, we can't study that, but it allows for it because science is a genuine understanding of our reality. And it's a very subtle difference. Speaker A Yes, that is. Speaker B But one of the things, for example, is that scientism, for example, would very strongly oppose any concept of intelligent design. Speaker A Yeah. Speaker B Because it's saying, well, okay, there is an intelligence out there, whereas true science would look at it and say, well, hang on, we've got all these amazing structures and machines in living cells. These are very characteristic of, of some Sort of intelligence behind that, the fact that we have a code, codes correspond to some sort of intelligence, a code reader that can make interpret the code in a significant and meaningful way. So that's a very subtle difference there. So scientism has become the dominant philosophy in most secular academic institutions and education systems. We need to understand disposition of faith. And again, they're assuming, yes, there is no supernatural. And that's why prior to this book I put out a book called the 7th Millennium. The evidence We Can Know the Future. Where I looked at the empirical evidence that didn't fit the materialistic worldview, such as people having very powerful premonitions that came true, people having dreams that came true or revealed the future, the prophecies of the Bible, these sort of things. Now some of the arguments raised against that was that, well, people could, you know, everybody has dreams. We have however many, you know, 10,000 dreams in a lifetime or whatever it is, and there's a probability that some of these could come true. But some of these dreams I pointed out, came true in very, very specific ways and pointed to very significant events. And some dreams and premonitions, saved lives, were very focused, very specific and particularly for example, the well known prophecies in the Bible. So this was an attempt to say, hang on, people are observing phenomena which suggests that there is a mind, that there is a supernatural. And then of course we have the account in the Bible. A lot of people don't realize that the Bible is largely a historical book, recording events then observations that people observed. Some of the counters to this is that people say, oh well, you know, the people very primitive, they didn't understand and so forth. Well that is inconsistent when we look at the current civilizations at those times, you know, people were very much aware of natural phenomena and so forth. So these, in my view, there's very powerful evidence for the existence of the spiritual world as the testimony of, you know, millions of Christians and so forth. So this is the difference. Scientism automatically blocks all that out. You can't have any of that. You can't bring in intelligent design, even though the evidence is overwhelming. As I said, when we look at the structures, biochemical machines and so forth in living systems, they, you know, they automatically dismiss this. Speaker A So true scientific inquiry then is a lot more open minded in terms of having other, you know, any sort of cause that could be a part of what we see around us can be taken into account. Whereas with the scientism perspective it's, it's eliminated the supernatural, the spiritual dimension as just not Part of the picture. And it's. So it's kind of narrowed its focus in terms of understanding the reality around us. Speaker B Yes. Speaker A Interesting. Thank you for explaining that. I feel like that's clarified something which I haven't heard talked about much. I know probably many people have heard talked about scientism, but just I guess through schooling and just undergraduate uni. I don't really remember hearing that term expressed. So it's really good to understand that. Another question. Most people today believe science has disproved God. Speaker B Yes. Speaker A Your book argues that scientism is making claims beyond its science's proper mandate in coming to this conclusion. So how do you respond to those who say empirical evidence is the only way to determine truth about reality? Speaker B Well, empirical evidence is a very, very good way to determine evidence about, you know, the real system that we have here now. But it can't answer all those questions. And for example, a lot of people espouse, for example, the Big Bang theory, which is underpinned by inflation theory. Inflation theory isn't really even science. It doesn't fall into that because it can't be tested. We can't do those experiments. It doesn't, you know, it's based on a whole lot of unproven assumptions anyway. But the what happens is that scientism makes a lot of assertions that are actually not proven. They're actually positioned of faith. But many people don't realize that. They don't realize that they're making these assertions or these claims have been made. They don't realize that they're not based on faith. Now there are a whole lot of limitations and this illustrated in one way. I remember when before Google was called Google so much, there was a search engine called Ask James. And there was a classic example of the limitations of this in that the story portrays a young science student trying to talk to his grandmother and explain to her how it's amazing you can use the Internet now. You can find out any sort of information. She said, oh, well, you know, I'm happy. He said, no, ask a question. Ask a question and we'll type it in to ask James and I'll tell you. And she thought for a moment and she said, well, ask her how Auntie Genevieve is feeling this morning. Okay. Speaker A Right outside the scope, just like that. Speaker B But God knows. Yes, this is the difference. So science can't know that. Right. The only way you can know that is to actually go and ask Aunt Genevieve how she's actually feeling this morning. But God knows. So there's sort of limitations here. So, and one of the limitations is how do we come to be, how did life start? Right? And this is a major problem. And this is where a lot of people think that scientists disprove God because we've done radiometric dating, we've dated the world as being, you know, four and a half billion years old. The universe is being 13.8 billion years, whatever the current value is, right? And the Bible says, well, hang on, God created, you know, this world in, in six days only, you know, thousands of years ago. So therefore sciences disprove God, right? So we've made, made this jump here. We need to understand and define this down a little bit more in that there are major problems with radiometric dating, as we've discussed, and there are major inconsistencies between these methods. And when we look at the overall knowledge that we've accumulated in terms of measuring the age of the Earth from erosion rates, carbon 14 dating, the rate at which mutations are accumulating in DNA, all these sort of things, all these other methods focus down onto a much shorter time span. When we come to the origin of life, we still don't know how the first cell could start from non living chemicals. We still don't know that it defies all the known existing laws of chemistry for that to happen. And the claim, of course, is evolution was that there was this single life form that then evolved into everything, right? All the different types of species that we have over time. And again, we know that the complexity of information stored in the genetic code is so huge that it can't arise by random mutations and there is just not enough time. So when we look at the actual, when we look at science and measure and observe what we can in this physical world, we have no explanation for how we came to be. Right? And so this is where when we look at science and the evidence, it points to some sort of external, supernatural creator. When we look at the other evidence, as I pointed out of dreams, premonitions, these sort of fulfilled prophecies where people have had vision, let alone the supernatural events that are also recorded in the Bible in front of witnesses of Jesus, resurrection, Jesus ascension, physical ascension with angels. It was observed by many people that were gathered to see him teach and give his last sermon. And these people then became so empowered that they went off at the cost of their lives to proclaim that this is true. God really came. And so we have this powerful evidence. We have evidence there, but in many cases, what the scientism position is, we won't look at the evidence Sorry, There is no evidence. They won't even consider it. And this is why a whole of these things like intelligent Design, this sort of thing, people want to ban it from schools, teaching in schools and this sort of thing. Yeah. Speaker A So what I hear you saying then is science of itself can give us limited understanding, whereas there are other things that can be considered more divine or personal evidence, which science would tend to ignore or scientism tends to ignore. But that can also inform our view of the truth about the reality that we are in. Speaker B That's right. So we come to an epistemological position of how can we know. Yes. Right. And so we can know by making observations, you know, seeing is believing. Although with artificial intelligence now, this is becoming very doubtful as well, because we can make so good fakes, you know, these days. So how, how can we know? So there are a number of different ways of knowing. We can make observations, repeated observations, and we can also have revelation because we have a mind. Speaker A Yes. Speaker B And this is another challenge for scientism, the origin of consciousness. Because consciousness is non material. Speaker A Yes. Speaker B You know, you can't weigh your thoughts, you can't squash your thoughts into a measuring cylinder and measure their volume, Right. Speaker A Definitely not. Speaker B And so this is where. But this can be explained by a non material existence. And this is very, very important, I think, to understand this. Speaker A Yeah. So having those multiple avenues of information, if you will, coming in to inform reality. Yeah. Ways of knowing that go beyond just the tangible empirical evidence which most of science tends to focus on. We need to take that broader picture in order to get a better full understanding of our reality. Which scientism doesn't take that into account. Essentially that's what we've understood and it's a faith position. Speaker B They've chosen to be there. Not on the basis of evidence. Speaker A Yes. Speaker B It's simply a personal faith choice. This is what I choose. Speaker A Yeah. Which makes sense because what we've discussed has shown that there is other evidence that could inform the premise that actually God factor can exist. So, yeah, thank you so much for sharing those thoughts and helping to explain about scientism. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers. Thank you for listening.