Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

82 J.J. Haldane
2 Theism and Science
An important tradition within Western philosophy believes in the primacy of
natural science as a guide to truth. This is sometimes met with the charge
that such an allegiance amounts to ‘scientism’ – the view that the only things
that ‘really’ exist are those recognized by fundamental physical theory; and
that the only forms of genuine knowledge are scientific ones. I shall try to
show that a commitment to fundamental science as the sole arbiter of the real
is indeed a form of unwarranted reductionism. But such a case has to be
made. Name calling is not a method of argument, and it is no less unsatisfactory
to deride atheist materialism as ‘scientistic’ than it is to abuse theist
antimaterialism by calling it ‘superstitious’. If important questions are not to
be begged, one has to show that a rejection of all else other than scientific
ontology and epistemology is unreasonable.
It might be so for a variety of reasons. First, it may be that the materialist’s
arguments against other ways of thinking are fallacious; second, it may be
that while they avoid fallacies they are inconclusive and that this leaves other
possibilities as rational options; and third, it may be that the materialist runs
into difficulties in stating and arguing for his or her own position. It may
even turn out that part of what he or she wants to say only or best makes
sense given certain non-materialist, non-reductionist and perhaps even theistic
assumptions. I shall be returning to these several ideas at various points but at
this stage let me offer a brief illustration.
Smart’s belief in science involves the kind of realism mentioned above.
That is to say he assumes that the best explanation of our having certain
ideas about the structure of the world, such as that it is constituted by
material elements located in space–time, is that these ideas are the products
of a history of interactions between elements in such a world and subjects
who are themselves parts of it. This view rests on a number of further
assumptions. First, there is the claim that the constituents of the world are
possessed of more or less determinate natures and that these are intelligible
to human beings. For that to be so many things have to be true of them and
of us. On the side of the objects, for example, it is necessary that their
intrinsic natures be relatively stable and that they be describable in qualitative
and quantitative terms. Assuming that the world is dynamic, the patterns
of interaction also need to exhibit a fairly high degree of regularity. Unless
these various conditions obtained no sense could be made of biological,
genetic, cosmological, chemical and physical theories, or of the forms of
observation and experimentation out of which they have developed. Regular
orbits of planets around stars and of electrons around nuclei involve stable
energy levels and angles of momentum; and considerable intellectual powers