In the original article published at our web site, we had addressed the question, “How is God relevant anymore, now that we have science?” If you have not read that original article, it might be best that you do, since this follow-up article shall be addressing a rebuttal offered by someone from AtheistForums.org named Tavarish. (His real name is withheld out of respect for his privacy, as he has not disclosed it publically.)

Although Tavarish had a lot to say, he could have spared himself a significant amount of writing because, for some curious reason, nearly half of his rebuttal was devoted to articulating what the scientific method truly is and how it is engaged. He could have spared himself all that writing because not only do I understand the scientific method already but, more importantly, that had nothing to do with what my article had to say. In other words, he invested a tremendous amount of writing in describing what the flashlight is and how to properly use it, whereas my article simply took those sort of issues for granted in order to address an antecedent issue: the fact that the flashlight works in the first place and how to account for that. I think Tavarish was very forceful and clear in his rebuttal, but unfortunately he was rebutting something other than my article. If he wants to make his stand on when a theory is scientific and when it is not, he might be surprised to find me standing beside him. Quite simply, the issue was never the demarcation problem, despite his attempt to insist otherwise, but rather the foundations upon which science rests (taking for granted what science is).

For those who are wondering when his rebuttal finds relevance to my article and what it had actually said, it was when he finally began to address the issues of metaphysics and epistemology. After his descriptions of what the flashlight is and how to properly use it, sometimes by contrasting its improper use, we can perhaps appreciate that he does finally join us in looking at and discussing its batteries.

I had indicated a couple of the assumptions upon which science rests, in order to show, first, the logical priority of metaphysics and epistemology and, second, that these sort of matters fall outside the purview of science. There are a number of reasons for going this route, not least of which is underscoring that the flashlight has batteries and that they need an explanation. Many things can be explained by reference to science, but not everything; i.e., not everything can be explained in scientific terms, as we ended up learning through self-referential incoherence. One thing science cannot account for is science itself. This why those batteries are relevant and significant.

For example, I described three assumptions upon which science rests: that the physical laws of nature observed in this region of space are the same in that unobserved region of space, that inductive inference works, and that the world as we observe it is how the world actually is. Tavarish claimed, to his discredit, that they’re not assumptions, that they are “laws based on a wealth of experiments” which he says are falsifiable.

  • With regard to the first assumption, it is falsifiable only hypothetically, as our experiments cannot be conducted anywhere but locally. We might construct an observation statement about the mass of baryonic matter in M33, but it cannot be falsifiable except by reference to properties of baryons locally. Yet we do not dismiss cosmology as pseudoscience.
  • With regard to the other two assumptions, they’re not falsifiable at all, not even hypothetically. Nor are they “laws,” as he tried to suggest. Rather, they are the very assumptions without which we couldn’t have scientific laws.

Yes, science does have “vast explanatory and predictive value,” but only with certain assumptions firmly in place—which are not themselves subject to scientific inquiry. It is those assumptions that my article centered on, i.e., what accounts for the fact that this powerful flashlight does indeed work. This delves into arenas outside the purview of science, which makes invoking science pointless, at best. Even if we should grant to Tavarish the nature of the flashlight and its proper use, doing so obviously doesn’t get us anywhere close to addressing its batteries. Science is an unintelligible coincidence of incomprehensible accidents that does not tell us anything informative about the world without that foundation in place. No critical thinker can pretend the batteries are an inconsequential issue. If science, why God? The very question implicitly suggests that it is possible for science by itself to account for everything—including itself and the assumptions upon which it rests—something that we know from our own history to be incoherent self-referential nonsense. There’s more involved than science alone when it comes to explaining the intelligibility of reality and our experience of it. If science, why God? Because science is not the end of the question, but is instead a means toward the answer with strict (and self-imposed) limited applicability that cannot afford to deny the unscientific foundations which enable it to get off the ground in the first place.

Yes, “unscientific” foundations. That is what it means for something to be outside the purview of science, when something is not subject to scientific inquiry—including not only the assumptions I indicated but also things like logic and reason which scientific enterprise makes unfettered use of. Although Tavarish believes that things like logic are scientific matters (falsifiable), he is unequivocally mistaken. Consider for example the law of contradiction, which to suit our purposes here states that something cannot be both X (apple) and not-X (bowling ball) at the same time and in the same respect. Tavarish claims that it’s possible to construct a falsifiable observation statement about this fact, that we “can take an apple and physically see and objectively verify, if need be, that it is an apple and not a bowling ball at the same time.” What he does not seem to realize is that this smashes the descriptive and the normative together as if they are the same thing. The law of contradiction is a normative statement, not a descriptive statement. Notice that his scenario would allow us to draw conclusions about what ‘is’ or ‘is not’ the case, but it does not allow for conclusions about what ‘can’ or ‘cannot’ be the case. Science can tell us what is or is not (descriptive), while logic tells us what can and cannot (normative).

There are certain assumptions in science (like the universality of physical laws across space and time) that are not falsifiable. Conclusions like the mass of baryonic matter in M33 are a subject of proper science only when certain assumptions are in place, which are not themselves a matter of proper science. We might observe that the physical laws are the same in this, that, and the other region of space, and that would be a scientific conclusion. But to inductively reason that the physical laws are universal across space and time is not a scientifically drawn conclusion because not all points of space and time are available for falsification. Please understand that it is perfectly acceptable to reason this way. But by no means is it scientific (if science is predicated on falsifiability). And normally this is not considered problematic by anyone, quite frankly, but it is rather fun to point it out to those who foolishly maintain that the methods and categories of the natural sciences are the ultimately proper and authoritative means of acquiring knowledge and understanding about reality. When the point is made that science is incapable of even getting off the ground without certain unscientific assumptions in place beforehand, a path is opened for exploring the batteries that provide the juice for the flashlight to function—i.e., why science is not itself enough.

Note: This does not establish a precedence, but rather marks an exception. What our friend Tavarish had done was permitted at this site because it was a first occurrence; we neither anticipated this circumstance nor could we expect him—or any other reader—to recognize, on his own, its unsuitableness. But from this exception onward, the Aristophrenium will no longer publish comments that contain nothing but a link to an external site (like a message board or a blog). That sort of tactic is simply unsuitable, and contradicts the interactive nature of a public blog in the first place. If you truly understand your own position and have an intelligible rebuttal against ours, you will be able to make your case succinctly in the Comments fields we provide here.

If it takes a lot more work to make a case against our position, or if you need a lot more room to make yours intelligible, and therefore need more allowances than a Comments field affords, you certainly are free to publish your rebuttal elsewhere. And if you think it deserves our attention or that of our readers:

1. For blogs: Include within your rebuttal a link back to the article you are responding to and the blogging platform we use here will recognize it as a sort of ‘trackback’ and it will get affixed to the article at issue.

2. For message boards: Send an email to the appropriate author of the article that you are responding to and make your request known. Use the Contact Us page for addresses.

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