Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology
Authors: Moreland J. P. 
Published: November 2022

SCIENTISM AND SECULARISM: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology by J. P. Moreland. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018. 224 pages. Paperback; $16.99. ISBN: 9781433556906. *Early in his new book, Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology, J. P. Moreland relates a story of a hospital stay. After telling his nurse that he earned his BS in physical chemistry, his ThM in theology, his MS in philosophy, and his PhD in philosophy, she observes that he "had taken two very unrelated, divergent paths" (p. 23). "Before she could explain further, I asked if this was what she meant: I started off in science, which deals with reality--hard facts--and conclusions that could be proved to be true. But theology and philosophy were, well, fields in which there were only private opinions and personal feelings ... (p. 23)." *In response, Moreland's nurse looks surprised and acknowledges this "was exactly what she had in mind" (p. 24). Rather than supposing his interlocutor is simply a kind nurse hoping to move on to her next patient, Moreland instead interprets the position he articulates for her as illustrating that "scientism" is "the intellectual and cultural air that we breathe" (p. 24). *Scientism is the nemesis in Moreland's book. He loathes it. But the precise definitional target of his loathing is not always clear. Early in the book, Moreland distinguishes "strong scientism" and "weak scientism." Strong scientism claims "something is true, rationally justified, or known if and only if it is a scientific claim that has been successfully tested and that is being used according to appropriate scientific methodology" (p. 27). Weak scientism, by contrast, "acknowledges truth apart from science," but "still implies that science is by far the most authoritative sector of human knowing" (p. 28). That's a helpful distinction, even if it is doubtful whether many accept strong scientism (Moreland provides no examples), and depending on how one defines "authoritative," it is also doubtful whether many people reject weak scientism. Having thus introduced the distinction, however, this nuance is often lost in the pages that follow, even in places where the clarity could have proved useful. More problematically, we never get a definition of what Moreland means by "science." To his credit, Moreland defends the omission, claiming that science cannot, in principle, be demarcated from nonscience (pp. 160-63). Still, it is difficult to follow the implications of Moreland's argument--effectively, an extended argument against scientism--without a working definition of what science is. Do only the hard sciences count? Or do the so-called soft sciences count as well? Or might empirical-leaning philosophy and theology and history count too? These distinctions are not readily available, and so it isn't clear precisely what position Moreland is arguing against. It is clear only that Moreland really dislikes it. *When Moreland offers data to support his argument, the results are also disappointing. For example, while reflecting on the supposed conflict between science and religion, Moreland estimates *"that 95% of science and theology are cognitively irrelevant to each other ... in that other 5% or so of science, there is direct interaction with Christian doctrine. Within this category, I would say that 3% of science provides further evidential support for Christian teaching ... that leaves 2% of current scientific claims that may seem to undermine Christian theology" (pp. 173-74, emphasis Moreland's). *None of these data are cited. They instead appear to be precisely what Moreland says they are--Moreland shooting from the hip. Oddly, he includes a pie chart to illustrate his guesswork. *Worse than these eccentricities, Moreland regularly falls prey to the very kind of scientific thinking he decries. On one hand, he proposes that "[t]he primary academic disciplines suited to studying the nature of consciousness ... are biblical studies, theology, and philosophy of mind" (p. 85). This view, to be frank, seems rather idiosyncratic and is not one that many academics, including religious ones, would ascribe to. Theistic philosophers rarely lean on biblical scholarship in developing their views of consciousness. On the other hand, Moreland's own variety of scientism appears in his defense of intelligent design, a position that accepts God's direct action throughout evolutionary history. Moreland strongly endorses intelligent design understood this way. Moreover, he emphasizes that we have scientific reasons to endorse the position: "intelligent design advocates believe that they can and have discovered scientific data that is best explained by an intelligent designer--the origin of the universe, life, consciousness, cases of irreducible complexity, and so on" (p. 171). *Understood in this way, intelligent design takes the hypothesis of an intelligent designer to be our best scientific explanation for a range of phenomena. Intelligent design thus stands against rival theistic accounts of evolution such as theistic evolution. Theistic evolution rejects the perspective offered by intelligent design, claiming that a creator is not best construed as a scientific hypothesis. Rather, according to theistic evolution, our reason to believe in God comes largely from nonscientific disciplines such as theology or philosophy. Accounts of creation such as theistic evolution are therefore comfortable with the claim that we can know about God as creator without requiring that this knowledge be distinctively scientific. For Moreland, by contrast, it seems God's creative action is best understood as empirically detectable, and that science offers a privileged perspective on our knowledge of God as creator. In discarding rival theistic accounts in favor of his brand of intelligent design, Moreland thus seems to embrace the very kind of scientism he pleads with us to reject. *Do some of Moreland's arguments land? Of course! Moreland is a professional philosopher with an impressive record. For example, his argument that scientism is self-refuting (p. 47-51) has strong moments: if scientism claims that science offers our only route to knowledge, then accepting that claim entails that we ought not accept scientism, since the position stakes a claim that can't be scientifically verified. Of course, this kind of argument works only for a particularly strong version of scientism, one that resembles the discarded logical positivism of the early twentieth century more than the subtler kinds of scientism that are widely held today. Likewise, some of Moreland's arguments for the immateriality of consciousness (pp. 86-88), the cosmological argument (p. 133-39), and the fine tuning argument (pp. 141-47) track contemporary conversations, even if these arguments are more controversial than Moreland gives them credit for. The problem with Moreland's book is not that it is completely devoid of clear philosophical thinking. The problem is that the wheat is mixed thoroughly with the chaff, and the two are difficult to separate. *Do we recommend the book? Not for the casual reader. Moreland's book is misleading: dangerous for the believer in its mischaracterizations and simplifications, infuriating for the unbeliever in its handling of both science and religion. Importantly, we (the reviewers) agree on this despite coming from different places: one of us (Vukov) is a Catholic and philosopher; the other (Burns), an atheist and biologist. For the careful scholar, though, the book may be worth skimming, as a spur to more careful reflection. Whether scientism is true or false, it has wide-reaching implications. We agree that the subject merits a serious and careful book-length discussion. That's just not what Moreland's book delivers. *Reviewed by Joe Vukov, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660; and Michael B. Burns, Assistant Professor of Biology at Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660.