Review: Scientism and Secularism

I don't want to become all book reviews all the time, but I think this book is important, so I decided to run another review already.

When I saw that JP Moreland's Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology was available for free review copies, my first reaction was that it sounded kind of heavy and I didn't want to read that right now. Then I thought about my teenage daughter and the questions she's been asking, the things she tells me about her classmates and teachers. Yeah, let's go ahead and read it now.

Scientism is variously defined, but it's safe to call it "the view that the hard sciences alone have the intellectual authority to give us knowledge of reality" (26). Anything else — such as moral or spiritual claims — is not true knowledge and is therefore subjective. In other words, if it's not "science" it's just opinion.

In this new paradigm, faith has been redefined. Instead of being trust based on what you know, it's belief without or even in spite of evidence.

Maybe that would be appropriate if scientism were true, but Moreland shows that the philosophy (for that is what it is) is self-refuting both on its face and because science rests on a foundation of unprovable but necessary building blocks (e.g., logic, mathematics). He goes into detail about some things that science cannot explain but theism can, and he explores ways to integrate Christianity and scientific exploration.

It sounds heavy, right?

It's really not that heavy. Chalk it up to Professor Moreland's excellent communication skills. Even when it gets deeper into the philosophy, it's pretty easy to read and follow his argument.

Is it a perfect book? Of course not. In particular, some of his examples are a little iffy. His background is in chemistry, but he draws them from physics, and sometimes they fall a bit flat. Also, I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of doing science without methodological (as opposed to philosophical) naturalism.

But his arguments are sound and his warning is necessary. In just a few decades we've gotten to a place where anything that isn't measurable is treated as opinion. It will only get worse unless people push back.

Which is why I give this my rare five-star rating. I dearly wish everyone would read this book. This is another free ebook that I'll be picking up in hard copy.