Many of those who advocate for the theory
of evolution also try to apply a strictly Western scientific process to the
rest of reality, seeking to answer questions about things such as God, ethics,
art, etc. This however presents a problem. Due to the naturalistic assumption
that underlies and informs western scientific philosophy, the viewpoint
disables and limits itself from asking certain questions and seeing certain
potential answers to those questions.
The modern scientific tradition in the West
begins and ends with the assumption that the only “things” that exist and are
true are grounded in material and/or observable foundations. This is all good
and dandy when applied to things such as biology, anatomy, or chemistry, but
some have often try to extend the domain of this scientific approach to other
areas of life that could potentially be beyond the reach of naturalistic
scientific understanding – this approach to certain aspects of reality is
called Scientism. The problem with
Scientism is that it dogmatically denies the possibility of alternate answers than
to the ones it presupposes.
I like to use an illustration when it comes
to scientism that will demonstrate the insufficiency of a strictly
materialistic scientific approach to answer the entirety of reality:
Suppose I filled a tea pot with water and
put it on a stove, then turned on the gas and stepped back to let it heat up.
Suppose I then asked a scientist to come over and tell me what was going on in
the situation. He would probably tell me about the water molecules and how they
were moving faster and faster causing friction, which translates into heated
water. This, however, is not the complete story. While all that is true about
the situation there is something else going on here. Simply put, I wanted a pot of hot water…
