Scientism on the PS forum

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

The definition I’m using – the one in the top left-hand corner of his diagram – is the one that he says almost no philosophers of science hold!

I see. And it appears that it is the one you are accusing some members of this group as holding. Can you provide any evidence that anyone here actually does so? Or is this just a strawman argument you are making?

As far as I can see, people who reject the non-scientific “design” arguments made by Denton and Townes are doing so on the basis of the logical failures they perceive in those arguments, a response which would not entail “scientism” of the narrow sort you are accusing people of holding. Here, for example:

Denton’s argument for intelligent design by himself

Thanks but that was really quite terrible. What Denton appears to be doing can be succinctly summarized as having realized that the outcomes of history depend on prior events, laws, and initial conditions. He says the entire cosmos seems to be designed for us because hadn’t there been all these facts of the matter that support our existence such as it is, then we wouldn’t have been here and been able to do all the things we do. He neglects to consider that this would be true for anything no matter what the laws and initial conditions of the universe were like, and that all the facts of the matter he invoke to infer that the universe is designed for us can be invoked to infer that the universe has been so arranged so as to cause the existence, history, and behavior of a particular carbon dioxide molecule on some distant planet in some distant galaxy. There is no objective reason to suppose we are the intended goal of reality any more than that carbon dioxide molecule. Change anything …