2 The accusations

For years I considered my interest in the axioms underlying science to be an interesting hobby that had no real importance, just an indulgence – a dabbling in epistemology, positivism and pragmatism. But more recently numerous organizations and individuals have come out with attacks on these premises by trying to demolish their significance and relevance. One need only briefly search the internet, or visit the sites of any of several fundamentalist “think tanks” and “research institutes” such as the Discovery Institute or Answers in Genesis to discover that the ranks of the anti-science and anti-reason factions are numerous and vocal. Several examples:

• A September 28, 2008 article in Wired magazine questioned if science is becoming a religion (Artist Builds Temple of Science)
  


• H.M. Morris in “Scientific Creationism” (1985) asserted that Evolution requires a much faith as science and that science is becoming a religion because it encompasses views of values and ultimate meanings.
  


• Warren Chisum, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, published a memo to all members of the Texas House of Representatives saying, “Indisputable evidence - long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”
  


• In “What's wrong with science as religion” – Salon.com July 31, 2008, Karl Giberson writes, “Impressive scientific progress has spawned these new preachers in the centuries since crowds sat spellbound under the judgmental voice of Edwards. Like their traditional counterpart, the new preachers speak with great confidence that their religion -- science -- contains all the truth we need to know and all the truth that can be known. They call us to worship at the altar of science, a summons of which I am skeptical, to say the least.
  


• Jonathan Barlow in “A Reformed Response To: Is Science a Religion?” says, “Confidence in the law of non-contradiction could be said to be faith. There is no direct way to prove the law of contradiction except that it must be presupposed in order to learn anything or differentiate anything from anything else. Likewise, the principle of induction, which states that the future will be generally like the past, is what makes possible the formulation of scientific laws and theories. We cannot test the truth of this principle scientifically, for we would be assuming the truth of induction to try and prove it.”
  


• In “Intelligent Design Revisited” (2005), David Limbaugh writes, “isn't the Darwinists' presupposition that life began without design unscientific? At the very least it requires as much faith as ID could conceivably require.”
  


• From “Delusions of Scientific Adequacy” (Aug 22, 2008), Dan Peterson writes, “But which requires more faith: the conclusion that the design evident in our universe (the only one we know to exist) is actually the product of a designer. Or the assumption that there must be a gigantic, unseen, universe-generating machine, with a colossal number of universes completely unlike our own bubbling into being, and that we just happened to win the lottery against stupendous odds?”
  


• In “The Devil's Delusion”, Princeton PhD, David Berlinski pillories the intelligentsia's new-found faith in atheistic scientism as shallow and exclusionary. "Like any militant church," he says, "this one places a familiar demand before all others: Thou shall not have any other gods before me."
  


• “Everyone, scientist or not, must start their quests for knowledge with some unprovable axiom—some a priori belief on which they sort through experience and deduce other truths. This starting point, whatever it is, can only be accepted by faith; eventually, in each belief system, there must be some unprovable, presupposed foundation for reasoning (since an infinite regression is impossible).” From http://www.answersingenesis.org.
  


• Richard Dawkins wrote in "Is Science a Religion", “I find it ironic that, whenever I lecture publicly, there always seems to be someone who comes forward and says, ‘Of course, your science is just a religion like ours. Fundamentally, science just comes down to faith, doesn't it?’”
  


• In her anti-science, anti-liberalism book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Ann Coulter assaults evolution by arguing that evolutionary biology is a false and godless religion with Darwin as its prophet and the school teachers as its priests: “Liberals love to boast that they are not 'religious,' which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as 'religion.'" She is referring, of course, to scientific explanations for cosmology, empiricism, external reality, induction, etc.
  


• Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and several other states have all recently battled or are currently battling anti-evolution, pro-Creationism factions bent on diluting and redefining the teaching of science in the public schools. These conflicts have taken the form of so-called “Academic Freedom” Laws, calls to ban the teaching of Evolution or Cosmology, and attempts to loosen the definition of Science to such a degree that astrology and religion could qualify as legitimate science class content. This is an ongoing struggle in which the pro-science side has recently been scoring significant victories. But the attacks keep coming.
  


• From “Feedback: Is Any Scientific Research Free from Presuppositions?” by Dr. Georgia Purdom, AnswersInGenesis, July 11, 2008: “Snelling, however, stated that all scientists have certain beliefs that are reflected in their data interpretation. ‘Every scientist has to make assumptions or has beliefs about how the evidence all fits together … If it’s legitimate for [evolutionary biologists] to have their belief system on which they base their science, it’s just as legitimate for a Christian to have the Bible as their belief system for which they base their science.”
  


• “Like Religion, Science Is Grounded in Non-Provable Beliefs”, by Nicanor Austriaco, Jr. “Most people would agree that religious faith is grounded in truths that cannot be demonstrated empirically using the scientific method. For the Catholic, these beliefs of faith are justified because they are accepted as true on the revelation and authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. What is not obvious is that scientific knowledge too must be grounded in essential, non-provable beliefs about the nature of the universe.” He goes on to give several examples that illustrate science’s unprovable reliance on parsimony and Ockham’s razor.
  


• “Science is the atheists' religion for the modern world, like Christianity or Islam, except that it is more superstitious and less refined. Atheists' belief in science requires faith like religion, but atheists don't recognize and accept its reliance on faith.” - //atheism.about.com/od/atheismscienceevolution/a/ScienceFaith.htm
  


• “Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.” – Dr. Paul Davies, "Taking Science on Faith," New York Times, Nov. 24, 2007
  

These mischaracterizations of science deserve a rebuttal, which is what the remainder of this paper attempts to provide.