Atheist and scientist Sean Carroll makes the claim that we
can trust scientists (and presumably other scholars) because they are willing
to admit when they don’t know something. This might often be true. However,
many have also admitted that they are quite biased in what they want to find
and see.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel admits:
·
“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by
the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are
religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally,
hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t
want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is
that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is
responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.”
Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin also admits:
·
“a prior commitment to materialism. It is not
that the methods… of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation
of the… world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our… adherence to
material causes to create… a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying…materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the
door.”
The late Australian philosopher John Smart revealed his bias
against the miraculous:
·
“someone who has naturalistic preconceptions
will always in fact find some naturalistic explanation more plausible than a
supernatural one… Suppose that I woke up in the night and saw the stars
arranged in shapes that spelt out the Apostle’s Creed. I would know that
astronomically it is impossible that stars should have changed their positions.
I don’t know what I would think. Perhaps I would think that I was dreaming or
that I had gone mad. What if everyone else seemed to me to be telling me that
the same thing had happened? Then I might not only think that I had gone mad –
I would probably go mad.” https://jamesbishopblog.com/2015/09/07/26-brutally-honest-atheist-quotes-worth-a-read/
Scholarship and the highest credentials are no safeguard
against bias, even bias within the laboratory.
No comments:
Post a Comment