The Discovery Institute has put together a series of short videos titled Science Uprising in which they challenge some of the claims being made nowadays by scientists which aren't really scientific claims at all but rather metaphysical dogma.
The first video in the series challenges the widespread assumption that science requires a materialist worldview. Materialism is the philosophical conviction that everything that exists is either matter or derived from matter (e.g. heat and light are derived from the combustion of material wood).
The view that only matter exists is not one that can be demonstrated scientifically and must be accepted by some sort of faith commitment, ironically enough.
Not only is materialism a metaphysical, rather than a scientific, hypothesis, but it leads to some bizarre consequences. For instance, many materialists deny that there is such a thing as consciousness because consciousness is immaterial. All there are, these materialists assert, is a swirl of chemical reactions occuring in the brain resulting in awareness, ideas and sensations.
Yet ideas are about something. How can anything that results from a material process like an electrochemical reaction be about anything? Moreover, when you have an idea you often understand what you're thinking about. How do molecules exchanging electrons generate understanding?
How, for that matter, do electrons traveling along neurons and jumping across synapses produce a belief, a doubt or a regret? How does a cascade of chemical reactions and electrical signals create pain, a color or a sound out of sheer energy?
Anyway, philosopher Jay Richards, who also appears in episode one of the Science Uprising series, gives us a primer on materialism and some of its shortcomings in this eleven minute video:
Here's episode one of the series:
Thanks to Evolution News for the videos.
