Victor Stenger On Anti-Science

Not really associated with the top tier of New Atheists, physicist Victor Stenger makes the same sort of arguments. While being self-touted as a particle physicist, he is very apparently also a devout Scientismist, as demonstrated by his book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.”.

Not only does science show no such thing, science cannot show such things, ever, by the very construction of empiricism itself. More intellectually honest Atheist scientists claim merely that such questions are “not interesting” (or some variation of that dismissal) because science cannot, ever, produce answers. For them, if empiricism cannot provide an answer, then the question is illegitimate or trivial. In other words, if you cannot answer the question, ever, then attack the question.

But not Stenger. Content to mischaracterize his own discipline, Stenger does not shrink from mischaracterizing those who criticize the undisciplined side of science. In his piece for Huffington Post, ”The Rising Antiscience”, Stenger resorts to stereotyping every aspect of his argument.

Starting with “favorability to science”, Stenger takes government funding as an indication of antiscience, with the implied belief that science should be a government adjunct, supported to the extent that national defense is supported. That national defense is a constitutional requirement for the federal government, and supporting science is not, escapes him completely. In fact, it is argued frequently that government cash dumped on scientists can and has produced corruption of those scientists who compete for it. Whether Stenger fits this category, I have no idea. (Note 1)

Stenger notices the sorry education which US students receive, but only in science. And he gives just one sentence to that subject.

Yet, he admits, the populace is well enamored of the technology which is science-based.

Says Stenger,

”So, you might ask: What's the problem? Where does all this hostility to science come in?

I think the answer is clear. The hostility is not directed toward the practical applications of science, as in medicine and technology, but with the challenges that basic science brings to the religious views held by the majority of Americans. Unfortunately most Americans do not seem to realize that basic scientific research is the foundation of the welcome applications.”

Here is where Stenger, as he frequently does, flies well away from any facts, and soars off into his own prejudices: antireligion. It’s as if Americans are opposed to electrons but not electronics. Is that the case? Hardly.

First, Americans are not antiscience, they are against corrupt Scientism, and money driven Scientismists with huge agendas as messiahs or Atheist evangelists. Americans know something that Stenger-type Scientismists seem not to know: science has inherent limits which include perpetual refutability, falsifiability, human corruption, and material limitations. When Stenger-type Scientismists make these accusations, Americans recognize the inherent falseness of the premises being made. And it is easy to project the agenda behind it. Here are Stenger’s premises:

A. Antiscience is driven by religion.

B. No, wait. Antiscience is driven by corporate profit, using religion.

First, what Stenger and the anti-antiscientists claim is that skepticism of evolution is anti-science. What they always fail to admit is that evolution, especially common descent, but also speciation via beneficial mutation, is not an empirical claim, nor is it verified in the one manner that guarantees objectivity: replicable experiments, replicated with public data. Not only that, they will not be so replicated. Thus they are not objective, they are subjective. So either Stenger is ignorant of the objectivity requirements for his own discipline, or he is dishonest. Either of those conditions renders him incompetent for consideration of valid pursuit of valid premises regarding, well anything, but certainly premises for one’s worldview.

But Stenger is also an avid Atheist; so his attachment to evolution as more than science is attributable to a religious need: to explain origins in terms of material existence, a necessity for Atheism. (Note 2)

Second, Stenger attempts to strengthen premise A, with this statement of premise B:

”Corporate profits are the force behind the denial of climate change. But denialism would not be so effective if its proponents were not able to exploit the antiscience inherent to religious faith.”

Well, no, it’s the logical attachment to the objective aspect of science (empiricism) which motivates the anti-Scientism to which Stenger is actually objecting.

Stenger then analogizes AGW denialists with the Tobacco industry of 30 years ago, a comparison which is a False Analogy and a Poisoning of the Well.

In fact there actually is empirical data which indicates that the history of the earth has contained vast variations in climate, from ice ages to warmer periods than we are in now. But Stenger ignores evidentiary objections and instead uses weather to prove his point about climate change: Bad storms prove the case, he implies. These implications are far outside the arena of science, a place where Stenger frequents whenever he wishes.

Finally, Stenger makes the standard hate attack on religion:

”Faith would not be such a negative force in society if it were just about religion. However, the magical thinking that becomes deeply ingrained whenever blind faith rules over facts warps all areas of life. It produces a frame of mind in which concepts are formulated with deep passion but without the slightest attention paid to the evidence that bears on the concept.”

And yet the “evidence” which he implies is conclusive is not even valid “cause and effect” empirical, experimental, objective evidence in either case: evolution or AGW; those two pursuits are merely inductive and are subject to the inductive fallacy in spades. Evolution has no predictive capacity for modern biological science, and it cannot, because it predicts everything and nothing, randomly, simultaneously, based on inferential inputs rather than observed cause and effect. AGW cannot prove that CO2 is the actual cause, it is merely inferred to be the cause, based on correlation only. (Note 3)

So it is blind faith in the magical thinking of Scientism that Stenger is promoting.

What Stenger wants is unyielding reverence for science, scientists, and especially Scientismists like himself who are engaged in their war on religion. But their use of magical thinking while attacking magical thinking demonstrates the internal non-coherence of their entire worldview.

Witness this categorical claim Stenger makes as he wraps up:

”From its very beginning in prehistory, religion has been a tool used by those in power to retain that power and keep the masses in line.”

This would actually be interesting, IFF Stenger had more than prejudice to support his claim, say actual evidence to present. In fact, a common sociologist claim is that religion came into being as an explanation for non-replicable observations requiring explanations, or for explanations of origins, and had utility for forming civil associations. But that is of no interest to Stenger; religion is tautologically evil, by definition, his very own definition: no evidence is required. The only thing worse than sociology is sociology by Scientismists.

”This continues today as religious groups are manipulated to work against believers' own best interests in health and economic well being by casting doubt on well-established scientific findings. This would not be possible except for the diametrically opposed world-views of science and religion.”

Aside from misrepresenting “well established scientific findings” as being somehow factual or objective, Stenger misapprehends everything outside his own small circle. Science and religion are not the least diametrically opposed. (note 4) What Stenger’s real, actual problem is, is with logic vs the religious attachment to non-empirical pursuits which Stenger (and others of his bent) call “Science” (implying it to be holy) when it in fact is merely induction. Logic precedes science, and must be used when evaluating claims which are made as if they are actual science.

When a pursuit is not empirical, it is not objectively evaluable; therefore, it is subjective and subject to the inductive fallacy.

Repeating that for full effect in a more specific mode:

Both evolution and AGW are not empirical pursuits, therefore, they cannot be considered empirical science; thus they are not objective, they are subjective; they are subject to the inductive fallacy. Therefore, they are not “well established scientific findings” in any sense with which Stenger wants to associate them. In other words, Stenger’s statement is false and purely prejudicial in its implication.

So neither evolution nor AGW deserve to be touted as factual, evidence based science which is not to be criticized nor considered with skepticism. To claim such is a religious claim, that of Scientism based on Atheism.

And Scientism based on Atheism is the religion being evangelized by the likes of Victor Stenger.

NOTES
Note 1: But using Stenger’s prejudicial accusational archetype, I’d have to guess so.

Note 2: Stenger’s absurd book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.”, is another example of his religious need to create a material explanation, which cannot actually be done: an intellectual dishonesty, to say the least.

Note 3. The predictability of the computerized hypotheses is placed far enough out (now it is a generation away, they claim in the face of land temperature stagnation) that the demands for taxpayer-cash-now cannot be refuted by non-existent experimental verification or falsification, or by inductive observation of variables in action. Some variables are now admittedly not known, such as those which create temperature stagnation of land mass while oceans warm.

Note 4. Creation “science” has no more (or less) verifiability than does evolution or cosmological origins science. So while it conflicts, it is not conflicting with actual empirical, “settled science”, it is conflicting as one materially unprovable hypothesis vs a second materially unprovable hyposthesis. Further, it is only in the Materialist claim of material-origins-only, a demonstrably irrational Category Error, where dualist religion conflicts with materialist monist hypotheses, and then not by much. So the entire notion of religious “anti-science” is bogus, and a wet dream of Scientismists who wish to use it to denigrate non-monists.

Addendum:
Here is some actual data to compare with Stenger's unsubstantiated claims:

Here

Here

Here