Self-Destruction on a Grand Scale

Holding On to the Grenade Too Long

David Hume was (and is) the enfant terrible of modern philosophy.  His scepticism was (and is) like an acid which corroded much of what went before and came after.  By putting up a barrier between the mind (rational thought) and the senses, such that there is no necessary connection between the two, he scared Western philosophers so profoundly they all got a bad case of the heebie jeebies.  Empiricism devolved into scepticism.  

The way a good many of his successors dealt with his scepticism was to ignore it.  Actually, Hume ended up ignoring it for a large part of his output.  He could not help himself.  He retreated to the  more positive, safer realm of championing empiricism--the championing of knowledge through the application of our senses to the world around us.  But he had to assume there was a connection between rational thought and empirical observation.  He also had to assert there was a connection between cause and effect that held whether empirically observed or not.

He dismissed non-empirical philosophy in a grand manner:

. . . if we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity and number?  No.  Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of matter of fact and existence? No.  Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.]

 Beware the universal acid--that acid so corrosive it cannot be contained and which in the end destroys all.  As Berlinski pointed out, with respect to Hume:

Analytical philosophers have been eager to commit books to the flames ever since [Hume], rather an odd vocational choice, all things considered.
 Whatever the vigor with which Hume advanced his views, arguments such as his when self-applied self-destruct.  Hume's remarks, after all, contain neither "abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number" nor "experimental reasoning concerning matters of fact and existence."  They are what they seem, and that is at once arrogant and uninteresting.  [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 57. Emphasis, ours.]

It is at this point all atheists who, like modern day Philistines, put forward their Goliath--empirical science--to smash religious belief to pieces find out that its scathing acidity cannot be contained.  The arguments they unleash prove too much.  They, as Hume found out, are powerful to the destruction of their own  positions.  Their arguments, when self-applied, self destruct.  This is child's play, really--but, then again, so many of the modern atheists reason in such a self-destructive, childish manner.

All truth must be grounded in scientific, empirical observation--or suffer to be rejected as myth, as a fairy tale, thunders the modern scientific atheist.  And the scientific, empirical basis for that claim is . . . What, precisely?  Beware the universal acid of empiricism which cannot prevent morphing into scepticism, the true universal acid.  No wonder the Holy Scriptures skewer those who deny God's existence to be inane.  [Romans 1: 21,22  ". . . claiming to be wise, they became fools".]

One standard theme is to divide the world of knowledge into two categories: those beliefs which are based upon (scientific) evidence and those which are not.  The latter represents superstitions, fairy tales.  The former represents evidence based truth.  Once again, we ask the child-like question: the empirical evidence upon which that distinction is based is what, precisely?  Oh, comes back the rejoinder, science and empirical knowledge are in a special category.  It does not need such justification or evidence.  It is self-evident.

Consider the following dodge and weave: 

In Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, the biologist Lewis Wolpert, who is resolutely prepared to dismiss religious thought as superstition, writes that, "scientific beliefs are special, and different from any other kind of thinking," inasmuch as scientific beliefs "are not programmed into our brains".

To say that scientific beliefs are special is to suggest, of course, that only specialists may assess them.  To say that religious beliefs are programmed into our brains is to say that  like the gag reflex, they cannot be controlled.  But if scientific beliefs are not programmed into our brains, why assume that religious beliefs are?  And if they are not, why assume that "scientific beliefs are special"?  [Ibid., p.59.]

Behold the wondrous works of universal acid.  The grand, metaphysical claims of science self-destruct when self-applied.  It's what happens when one holds on to an  unpinned grenade too long.