Atheism is not inconsistent with the scientific method

Triablogue, never tiring in its quest to prove that all things non-Christian are just so much crazy nonsense, links to an article (here, here)  saying atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method.  The physicist in question is Marcelo Gleiser.

I now respond to the relevant portion of that article.  Genereally, Gleiser does a liberal tap dance, and spends no time whatsoever showing any contrast being basic atheism and the scientific method.  Instead, he notes that some atheists are too extreme and end up embracing scientism.  Let's just say I didn't start shaking with nervousness because the guy attacking atheism was a "prizewinning physicist".  However, I noted that by putting "prizewinning physicist" into the title of the article, the author correctly believed it would hook a lot of people who routinely and happily commit the argument-from-authority fallacy.

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says

Then there is nothing to debate, because all statements from prizewinning physicists are by logical necessity self-evidently true.  Did you notice how I pissed myself with worry upon reading the title to that article?

Why are you against atheism?
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.

First, I attack the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus by critiquing the arguments from Mike Licona, Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig.  Paul admitted that to falsify Christianity was to turn Christians into false witnesses (1st Corinthians 15:15).  If those arguments are successful, the best the Christian could do to save face would be to invoke the YHWH of the OT (i.e., just because Jesus didn't rise from the dead doesn't mean there's no god). 

That's correct.  But if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, that turns Jesus and Paul into "false witnesses".  Assuming the true god does not inspire falsehood, then the OT YHWH must be presumed to view Christianity as heresy.  Even assuming Jesus and Paul worked genuinely supernatural miracles, the OT still condemns them to the death penalty:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 18 'I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.   (Deut. 18:18-22 NAU)

The point?  If my arguments against Jesus' resurrection are reasonable, I am equally reasonable to believe that the OT god is just as pissed off at Christians as he is at atheists.  At least we can say the bible doesn't make the death penalty for atheists anywhere near as clear as it does the death penalty for false prophets.

Second, atheism need not be categorical.  Atheism simply means lack of belief in god, or a belief that no god exists.  That's all. Atheism does not dictate the level of dogmatism that an atheist should have about atheism's truth.

Third, "belief in non-belief" was intended to make the reader draw the conclusion that atheism harbors a self-contradictory premise.  Not true.  Atheists do not deny the fact that belief exists.  They simply reject one of those beliefs.  If you deny the existence of the tooth-fairy, are you guilty of belief in non-belief?  No, you are only asserting that one particular belief is unworthy of your assent.

Fourth, atheism is not guilty of "I have no evidence for or against".  You probably deny the existence of the tooth-fairy.  Does her non-existence mean you "have no evidence for or against"?  No.  Rather, your basis for denying the tooth-fairy is clear:  the evidence in favor of her existence is horrifically unpersuasive.  Wel gee, guess why atheists don't believe in 'god'.

But in science we don’t really do declarations.

That's right.  And as shown above, atheism is simply a belief about a proposition, and like science, atheism doesn't dictate the level of dogmatism with which atheists should consider the proposition true.  Scientists disagree with each other all the time on whether some proposition is true, false, better supported than others, etc.  Atheism doesn't demand that its followers be fanatical about it.  it isn't like there is some magical book out there in support of atheism which says "be ye transformed by the renewing of your brain" (Romans 12:2) ..."blessed are they who have not seen and yet have disbelieved" (John 20:29), "whatsoever is not of disbelief is criminal", (Romans 14:23), nor do atheists think the only way they can better themselves is to gather in groups on Sunday with other people who agree that one magic book has all the answers to life, etc, etc., and they usually don't hurl the worst possible curses at other atheists merely for disagreeing with them about certain beliefs (Galatians 1:8-9).

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.

One reason I am a "strong" atheist is because the word "god" is, like 'spirit', incoherent.  it refers to nothing demonstrably real, and produces about as much good as does debating the concept "creation from nothing".
Since Christians refuse to believe their god can be physical, they cannot refute atheism by speculating the existence of advanced space aliens with god-like powers.  If they wish to say God can be physical, I would not be as opposed to that as I am to the idea of an "immaterial" god.

This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys

I would agree that there are serious problems with some of the fodder thrown around by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  But the "new atheists" are not necessarily consistent with the basic definition of atheism.  Atheism doesn't recommend publishing books about how religion poisons everything, or books on how matter not guided by any intelligence still ends up becoming more complexly organized when there are certain types of energy inputs.  Atheism is just atheism.  How far you want to take the concept, is, like Christianity, up to nobody but you.

—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.

yup, there's money to be made off the fact that people disagree about religion.

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.

That's your first problem:  Unless you define "spirituality" in material physical terms, you'll be talking about something that has no demonstrable tether to the real world.  Making one wonder why human beings are so dependent on their 5 senses (which detect nothing but physical realities).  Something tells me that at the end of the day, paying more attention to physically sensed realities is probably going to be better than paying attention to "non-physical" stuff. 

So, a message of humility, open-mindedness and tolerance.

Sorry, I cannot be openminded to the possibility that an incoherent concept is an actual reality.

Other than in discussions of God, where else do you see the most urgent need for this ethos?

You know, I’m a “Rare Earth” kind of guy. I think our situation may be rather special, on a planetary or even galactic scale. So when people talk about Copernicus and Copernicanism—the ‘principle of mediocrity’ that states we should expect to be average and typical, I say, “You know what? It’s time to get beyond that.”

No, I argue that the universe is infinite in size, and therefore, the earth is about as unique as a grain of sand on a beach.  See here.  The idea that there is a limit the amount of 'stuff' in the universe is just plain foolish.  In one of my rebuttals to Frank Turek, I quoted:

"There are a dizzying 2 trillion galaxies in the universe, up to 20 times more than previously thought, astronomers reported on Thursday."

See my full rebuttal to Turek here.

When you look out there at the other planets (and the exoplanets that we can make some sense of), when you look at the history of life on Earth, you will realize this place called Earth is absolutely amazing.

We naturally cease to be amazed at x if we have reason to believe x is very common.

And maybe, yes, there are others out there, possibly—who knows, we certainly expect so—but right now what we know is that we have this world, and we are these amazing molecular machines capable of self-awareness, and all that makes us very special indeed.

Life forms naturally prioritize their own importance.  To do otherwise is to perish, which is the exact opposite of the body's tendency to try and continue living.

And we know for a fact that there will be no other humans in the universe; there may be some humanoids somewhere out there, but we are unique products of our single, small planet’s long history.

As an atheist, I argue that we have a theory of human worth superior to that of Christians:  most people agree that worth arises from rarity.  The more rare or unique something is, the more we either value it in money-terms, or desire to have it in our possession.  Many collectors of antiques would not wish to sell.  In this atheist universe, yes, that which makes up you is probably never going to happen again.  That's how you draw legitimacy and purpose from temporal significance, even admitting that it doesn't sound as yummy and exciting as drawing legitimacy and purpose from ultimate significance. No fool avoids going to the store to buy a candy bar merely because this would not be significant on an ultimate or cosmic scale.  Every single one of us recognizes how important it is that we often look away from the clouds and make sure we aren't driving the car off the edge of a cliff.

The point is, to understand modern science within this framework is to put humanity back into kind of a moral center of the universe, in which we have the moral duty to preserve this planet and its life with everything that we’ve got, because we understand how rare this whole game is and that for all practical purposes we are alone.

Except that this does not follow unless you care about future generations of human beings, and we can manifest such care in ways that do not involve taking care of the dirt.  I care about future people enough to write rebuttals to false fundamentalist religion, but not enough to convert my car from gas to electric.

For now, anyways. We have to do this! This is a message that I hope will resonate with lots of people, because to me what we really need right now in this increasingly divisive world is a new unifying myth. I mean “myth” as a story that defines a culture. So, what is the myth that will define the culture of the 21st century? It has to be a myth of our species, not about any particular belief system or political party.

That means you refuse to see Christianity as true, which means Triablogue's posting the link to your article indicates Triablogue has gone liberal.  Go ahead and let the devil babysit your kids.

How can we possibly do that? Well, we can do that using astronomy, using what we have learned from other worlds, to position ourselves and say, “Look, folks, this is not about tribal allegiance, this is about us as a species on a very specific planet that will go on with us—or without us.” I think you know this message well.

The stupid presuppostionalists at Triablogue would disagree and say you aren't engaged in 'true' learning if you attempt to take in naturalistic knowledge absent a specifically Christian philosophical foundation.

I do. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment, only because earlier you referred to the value of humility in science. Some would say now is not the time to be humble, given the rising tide of active, open hostility to science and objectivity around the globe. How would you respond to that?

This is of course something people have already told me: “Are you really sure you want to be saying these things?” And my answer is yes, absolutely. There is a difference between “science” and what we can call “scientism,” which is the notion that science can solve all problems.

Exactly, and I've never heard of any atheist who thought science can solve all problems.  Humanity, being what it is, does not appear likely to ever evolve to a state where they no longer disagree with each other.   So I see no basis for thinking science can solve all problems.  And the universe being infinite in size is definitely something that science will never be able to "solve", since it takes limited human beings to measure the universe, and we can never be knowledgeable of everything existence has to offer.

To a large extent, it is not science but rather how humanity has used science that has put us in our present difficulties. Because most people, in general, have no awareness of what science can and cannot do. So they misuse it, and they do not think about science in a more pluralistic way. So, okay, you’re going to develop a self-driving car? Good! But how will that car handle hard choices, like whether to prioritize the lives of its occupants or the lives of pedestrian bystanders? Is it going to just be the technologist from Google who decides? Let us hope not!

Now you know why I agree with Joseph Tainter that because America incessantly insists on becoming more and more complex, American society is certain to collapse.

snip.

Wow.  I've suddenly stopped being an atheist.  And all because a "prizewinning" physicist thinks atheism inconsistent with the scientific method.  LOL.  All he did was prove the admitted stupidity of certain extreme forms of atheism that misrepresent science's abilities.