A radical form of Naturalism is called scientism. Scientism asserts that only natural science can give us the truth about our reality. Everything else, such as ethics, morality, theology, and philosophy, is based only on personal feelings, blind faith, or a specific cultural upbringing, even though these messages have been considered truth and a source of wisdom for hundreds of years. Scientism claims that there is no truth that can be discovered by a non-scientific method. Every culture has an area – a sphere – of beliefs that most people agree on, both rationally and emotionally. What lies outside this sphere cannot be considered true or reasonable.
It is natural for most people to believe in science. It is almost incomprehensible all that science has given humans of the greatest importance for our lives and welfare. Machines have given us a thriving industry that has produced all the articles that make life easier for us. We can just mention stoves, refrigerators, and everything that runs on electricity. Recent years have presented a revolution in all forms of communication. Human ingenuity has produced cars, airplanes, boats to transport people and goods. Science has given us advanced equipment for diagnosing and treating the sick. All this is credited to science. Therefore, one is not taken seriously if one allows oneself to doubt science. It has proven its justification! Therefore, scientism has become a dominant view in Western culture.
The first question that naturally arises is whether there are aspects of our world that science cannot explain, which lie outside this sphere. Natural science cannot explain mathematics. Science presupposes mathematics. It builds on mathematics.
Natural science also cannot explain the laws of logic, which we often call “the first principles.” These first principles are not based on science. It is quite the opposite. Science rests on these principles, and without this possibility, we would not be able to perform science.
Scientism denies what we call a metaphysical reality. The physical is what we can feel and touch. What we can register with our senses is called empirical knowledge. But we have no empirical knowledge about the origin of the universe. Science cannot currently prove with scientific methods that our universe came into being by itself. Since nature came into being with the Big Bang, natural mechanisms cannot explain the origin of the universe, as nature is a result of the Big Bang. Therefore, no natural causes existed before our universe came into being. We have also seen that science cannot explain the origin of life.
Scientism says that only science can give us the truth about our reality. If we study this sentence more closely, we will find that the sentence is not scientific. The sentence is not the result of a scientific investigation. No attempt has been made to weigh, measure, or register anything that says this sentence is correct and accurate. The sentence does not describe a scientific result. It tells us something ABOUT science. This means that the sentence is not scientific but philosophical. It deals with our thoughts about science. This is what we call philosophy. The sentence thus expresses an opinion about science. And such a sentence that is not based on science, scientism says, cannot be true. Therefore, scientism denies or rejects itself. Scientism thus becomes self-contradictory.
