Atheism and the Scientific Method

Scientific America published an interview with Marcelo Gleiser titled Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prize-Winning Physicist Says. I don't agree with this particular agnostic's conclusion. He makes the false assertion that atheism is as a belief in non-belief. Atheism might mean that in the strongest sense, but the broadest definition of atheism says it's simply a lack of belief. The atheist is unconvinced. Here's Gleiser's false assertion:

I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that. This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys—even though I want my message to be respectful of people’s beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on. And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation. It’s not just me; it’s also my colleague the astrophysicist Adam Frank, and a bunch of others, talking more and more about the relation between science and spirituality.

An atheist doesn't declare: "I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe." An atheist declares they don't believe because the evidence for belief is insufficient to sway them to belief. The facts don't support the hypothesis for gods. Gleiser's characterization of atheists is as preposterous as some of the atheist reasons to dismiss agnostics.



There's a flip side of this argument used by some atheists. They say agnostics fail to acknowledge a lack of belief if they don't use the atheist label. They assertion is the agnostic label doesn't answer the question of belief and we should all profess atheism because there isn't evidence for belief.

The reality is that we are both different sides of the same non-religious coin if we aren't theists and don't use a theistic label. We all lack belief because we lack verifiable truths as knowledge. If you don't believe then atheists are agnostic and agnostics are atheist. One describes belief and the other describes knowledge so you're both even if you don't use both labels.

Gleiser's rejects the "New Atheists" because he thinks they claim proof for a lack of evidence. However, all I've ever seen from them is the promotion and support of the scientific method to refute belief. I don't recall reading or hearing any of them say scientific methods have proven disbelief. This is the same as the agnostic view of knowledge. Beliefs are refuted as unproven instead of being 100% disproven by science.

Fortunately Gleiser moves on to a discussion of knowledge and the limits of science:

It is impossible for science to obtain a true theory of everything. And the reason for that is epistemological. Basically, the way we acquire information about the world is through measurement. It’s through instruments, right? And because of that, our measurements and instruments are always going to tell us a lot of stuff, but they are going to leave stuff out. And we cannot possibly ever think that we could have a theory of everything, because we cannot ever think that we know everything that there is to know about the universe. This relates to a metaphor I developed that I used as the title of a book, The Island of Knowledge. Knowledge advances, yes? But it’s surrounded by this ocean of the unknown. The paradox of knowledge is that as it expands and the boundary between the known and the unknown changes, you inevitably start to ask questions that you couldn’t even ask before.

I don’t want to discourage people from looking for unified explanations of nature because yes, we need that. A lot of physics is based on this drive to simplify and bring things together. But on the other hand, it is the blank statement that there could ever be a theory of everything that I think is fundamentally wrong from a philosophical perspective. This whole notion of finality and final ideas is, to me, just an attempt to turn science into a religious system, which is something I disagree with profoundly. So then how do you go ahead and justify doing research if you don’t think you can get to the final answer? Well, because research is not about the final answer, it’s about the process of discovery. It’s what you find along the way that matters, and it is curiosity that moves the human spirit forward.

This speaks to science and agnosticism. The notion that we may never get to the final answers is why I gravitate towards agnosticism as my main label and rallying flag. Knowledge and curiosity to learn does move the human spirit forward. I can't believe in any of the known religious beliefs and I don't rest solely on the simple lack of belief in atheism. I'm open to knowing and would like to know, but I humbly accept the limits of our human abilities and simple intellect.