There’s a delightful interview currently available on Book TV with Curtis White, who argues in his latest book (I have not read it yet), The Science Delusion, that in recent years there has developed a climate of deceit and misplaced authority in the professional science community whose books have become main-streamed in spite of the fact that they do not always stick to their subject; science.
Many of these popular books (The God Delusion, God is not Great) deal with cosmology. neurology and evolution and attempt to explain all sorts of things from why we feel the way we do, how our brains are running our lives (victimizing us with all sorts of pathology that only science can cure), to how our genes are using us to make more/better genes. White, a self-proclaimed atheist, complains that not only has science become needlessly entrenched in a materialist world view, but over steps its bounds with moralistic claims you would expect to hear from religious leaders or politicians.
Of course, like anyone else who dares question the gods of modern science, White has been properly admonished, shunned and disqualified for committing the unpardonable sin in the religion of modern scientism; questioning authority. It’s true that he is not a scientist which he states quite clearly but that his conclusions are drawn from a philosophical background and his love of the Romantics (the period, not the rock band).
What the mainstream scientific community has yet to admit is that their special knowledge does not qualify them to speak about language, morality, philosophy or meaning. When the approach of science boils itself down to materialism and claims to have the skinny on all of the stuff, they forfeit any license to be able to say anything at all about the rest of life. And that makes them mad, because science has fought long and hard to prove that there is nothing but stuff.
So they’re stuck with their own conclusion that there simply isn’t anything immaterial. But unaware of the cement they’ve stepped in, they can’t see with their hearts anymore (or don’t trust any sort of poetic vision). Understandably, sacrifices must be made if we are to eliminate God, the gods and all of that silly immaterial superstitious non-stuff.
I, too am terribly underqualified to even speak of such things as Science, and I am a huge fan, but I do agree that the materialist view of the world will be the death of science by their own rules. If modern science keeps insisting that all we are, are bits of accidental star dust, it’s only a matter of time before they convince the rest of us that it’s true, star dust can’t possibly know enough to figure out how we got here, let alone the why of the matter.
Like many other issues in the culture here we see the continuation of the trend towards an all or nothing framing of the topic, “if you’re not with us, you must be against us.”
“I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science; science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart” Coldplay
Theoria 
The “why of the matter” just struck me, because I am asking myself what one expects to find by asking the question about why we exist in the first place. Does having a materialistic world view contradict a finalist view, is everything that is merely material also random? If the idea of evolution is materialist, is it justified to ask for a purpose of the entire concept of “survival of the fittest”? Because the idea as such suggests to me that there is a finalistic concept or pattern or system behind all of it, if you will. I wonder if there is any justification in claiming that there is actually such a thing as the “why of the matter”, merely because we are able to ask ourselves the question, because we see patterns that clearly stick out to us, so we can make sense of them. But then again, why do we have this way of thinking in the first place? Sorry, if my questions appear flawed or don’t make any sense to you. But I sometimes get overwhelmed with my own lack of knowledge and understanding.
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Thanks for your insights! They are most welcome here. I think you hit on a great point about what any question asks. Language does have a way of forcing a particular view and that was very much one of the points I was trying to make! I think the why of the matter suggests a causation which implies intentionality, morality through cause and effect; linear time, beginnings, endings.
When someone sees the why of the matter they are giving a way their particular perspective of reality. To only see the why and not to see the what moves us from what is at hand, the phenomena, toward something in the future.
Aristotle and other really old, long gone people understood that there are multiple ways to understand causation and that “why” is just one of them. Check out Aristotelian causes for more on that.
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Thank you very much for replying! I really appreciate your insightful feedback. 🙂
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You’re welcome! I am pleased to have found this community of writers and likewise, enjoy reading your honest, from the heart, insights.
Debra
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“, like anyone else who dares question the gods of modern science, White has been properly admonished, shunned and disqualified for committing the unpardonable sin in the religion of modern scientism; questioning authority”
Yup. And being a scientist who questions other scientists? Well, that’s enough to get you blackballed. I know a little about that.
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Hi Erik, when I listened to Curtis on Book TV, I thought of you. It’s very sad that many in the science community have succumbed to the pressure of the current dogma. Peace my friend!
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