Intellectual Dishonesty of "Scientific" Atheism

There are several varieties of atheists and agnostics. The ones described here are the "intellectual" atheists who say there can be no God because it cannot be proven by logic or science and cannot be seen (or heard, or touched etc). Unlike other types of non-believers these people have no personal or empathetic grievance against God. They are atheists simply because they are proud. They are proud of their alleged intellectual superiority over people of faith and they resort to mockery of believers for their feeble minds. These are the people I want to talk about here.

Of all the criticism that is leveled against religion by these atheists, the most common is that people of belief lack the ability to think clearly (or "scientifically", "logically" etc). This basic criticism, however, can be broken down into several components. I think these components are:

1. Religious belief is not supported by facts, or in other words religion is based on unproven hypotheses,

2. Religious doctrine is not open to questioning and verification and/or experimentation,

3. Religious doctrine appeals to the authority of scriptures and,

4. Religion also appeals to the authority of personalities (prophets, incarnations...)

Atheists proclaim the superiority of scientific reasoning (and of their own intellect) by pointing out the stark difference between scientific method and the four points above. Perhaps no one has held a mirror up to them.

Not too long ago I visited an online forum of atheists. I was surprised at the wanton abandon with which terms like "quantum fluctuations", "Higgs Boson", etc. were being thrown around. I was curious to find out how many of these self proclaimed "scientific" people had any real grasp over any of these concepts. So I asked (a) if anyone has carried out or witnessed an electron diffraction experiment and (b) if anybody would explain to me the difference between Fermions and Bosons. Most of them said irrelevant things and didn't even attempt an answer. One person said she had dyscalculia so quantum mechanics was clearly beyond her ken. Another said her husband was a physicist with a PhD from an Ivy League school and a solid understanding of quantum mechanics. The husband himself popped up later to quote a technical bookish answer†. It was precise but utterly useless. I am not sure if he was trying to merely show off or if he didn't actually understand the concept very well. (I am not really in awe of Ivy League schools, as you can tell.) However, the issue here isn't whether the physics doctorate knew his stuff but that even if he did, assuming he did, he still could not explain it in terms which a lay person could understand. However, to be fair it's not all his fault. It is also the nature of the subject.

In order to understand some of the most sophisticated concepts of modern science, physics for example, you have to devote about twenty-three years of your life to education (school, college, grad school, PhD), of which half should be spent studying physics. And to be an expert of any repute you may have to spend many years even after that. I can say with absolute certainty that not only the person with dyscalculia, but the vast majority of atheists (on that forum and elsewhere) haven't spent anything even close to eleven years studying physics. But they invoke quantum mechanics and general relativity all the time. They talk of the Big Bang as if it was an event they witnessed in their backyard. They talk of baryons and leptons as though they have seen them with their own eyes. I use physics and science interchangeably because it happens to be the most fundamental of all the natural sciences, but the argument is true for any other branch of science as well. So this is the first problem of "scientific atheism". Most atheists ridicule persons of faith for believing something blindly, but they are guilty of the same fallacy.

Let's examine the example and compare it with the four arguments above:

1. Religious belief is based on unproven hypotheses.

I submit that so is science. Without hypotheses science cannot progress. Newton didn't arrive at the theory of gravitation by proof, but through insight perhaps even inspiration. That is why it is called a discovery. Discoveries are stumbled upon. And as regards the adjective unproven, well, look at gravitation, for instance. Is there a final theory of gravitation? During Newton's time it was explained by an instantaneous force, action at a distance, a field. Einstein's theory dismissed that idea and replaced it with the idea of a space-time continuum curved by the presence of matter: no longer a force. With the advent of quantum field theory, now the prevalent idea is that gravity is caused by the exchange of gravitons. And gravitons have never been detected. Over three centuries, gravitation, something we experience everyday, has had multiple explanations. Each new explanation has used a new paradigm. There is no finality to any of these theories and none can say for certain that there will not be another explanation which will use yet another heretofore unheard of paradigm. We have gained the ability to measure the effects of gravitation to a greater detail than ever before but we have not gained a better understanding of how gravitation works, and certainly not what it is. Those of you who disagree with my statement, tarry, I will preemptively address your argument. Why does a newer theory replace an older one? Because the newer theory can more accurately predict the results of a measurement of something. It is still an approximation. We are looking at a black box with inputs and outputs. By observing how the outputs and inputs behave with respect to each other we are trying to guess what is inside the black box. And as we gain the ability to measure the inputs and outputs more precisely, we must keep modifying our theory of what is in the box. And so it is with every theory of science. Just like no one has detected gravitons, no one has seen an atom. No one has seen an electron. Is it a particle? Is it a wave? A wave of what? Mathematics is the tool one uses to understand physics. But mathematical models are still models. Models of reality. We can build better models, but models are not reality. They are unproven hypotheses and that is why they are replaceable.

2. Religious doctrine is not open to questioning and verification

One of the strongest criticisms of atheists is that religious doctrine is not verifiable, but scientific fact is. I refer back to my question in the forum: how many atheists have actually carried out or even witnessed an electron diffraction experiment? That is the starting point of wave particle duality. If you haven't done that experiment, do you still believe in wave-particle duality? If you do, you are not scientific as you think you are, but let's say you are indeed interested in setting up the experiment and observing the results. Can you? Do you have the necessary equipment? Do you have the instructions? How easy is it for you to independently verify the truth of that theory? In case experimentation is not your cup of tea, and you are more inclined to theory, how easy is it to understand quantum mechanics? Have you tried classical mechanics first? Science is in plain view only to those who have spent years upon years in the pursuit of it. The tool of mathematics that is used to model physics is an extremely specialized language. You are better off reading the Vedas written in ancient Sanskrit: it would probably take less time to master Sanskrit than to learn tensor calculus, which you will need to understand general relativity. So you see scientific fact is not independently verifiable by just anyone. To be able to verify you first have to be able to understand the models. To understand the models, you have to devote many years of dedicated study. I am not convinced that the ordinary atheist who huffs and puffs and invokes high physics all the time has spent a decade in its study. Therefore the claim that science is independently verifiable is only a fantasy. One needs special training to be able to follow the language of modern science, and that training is not open to all. Modern science is arcane, more arcane than most religions. That brings us to the next point.

3. Religious doctrine appeals to the authority of scriptures

Students of science don't go about discovering the entire body of scientific knowledge from scratch. Instead they build on what others have done. And in order to start from where the previous person left one has to have deep faith in the work that has already been done. Didn't a famous scientist once say that he could see so far only because he stood on the shoulders of giants? Where would modern physics be without the Principia? It strikes me as interesting that it was written in Latin and most of us have to rely on a translated edition. But that's just one book, and there have been many others. Some very technical, some not at all. Even non-technical, popular science books like A Brief History of Time or The Emperor's New Mind are nearly unreadable without an extensive background in science. But it is remarkable how often atheists quote from popular science books such as these. This really rolls back into the previous argument: these concepts are difficult for most people even in their "non-technical" forms. And usage of terms and concepts that are not clear to one is nothing but an appeal to authority. Just like the physics doctorate who couldn't explain the difference between Bosons and Fermions and therefore quoted the book definition.

4. Religion also appeals to the authority of personalities

That's the other kind of appeal to authority. And it is known by a more popular phrase: name-dropping. Atheists quote scientists left and right and often without context. "Einstein didn't believe in God", "Feynman was an atheist", &etc. First of all they were great physicists, but their knowledge was also specialized in a particular realm only. These scientists spent their entire life in the study of physics, but how does that make them an authority on religion? It is like quoting an economist while arguing against the current theory of gravitation: Professor Shilling says "Money is the ultimate gravitational force" therefore general relativity is wrong. Well the professor would have about as much authority on gravitation as Einstein has on religion. Second, we don't really know the lives of these scientists. While they may have said something at some point that may make them look like atheists, their personal lives and beliefs may have been different. Without knowing them in person it is impossible to say what is it they believed. And third, for all the scientists that may appear to have been atheists, there are those who were evidently spiritual. Newton was no atheist. Schrödinger was deeply influenced by the Vedantas, as was Tesla.

These are just some examples of the intellectual dishonesty that atheism perpetrates. There are others that I will examine in future posts.

† The paraphrased answer from the physicist, if anyone is interested, was that Fermions are half-integer spin particles following Fermi-Dirac statistics and Bosons are integer spin particles following Bose-Einstein statistics. It's like if the question was what's the difference between an apple and an orange and someone says that an orange grows on an orange tree and an apple grows on an apple tree!