Naturalism is Based on Blind Faith

Naturalism is Based on Blind Faith

Modern man's confidence that all things have a naturalistic explanation is nothing more than blind faith.  Modern man still has a God, but this "god" is the god of time, chance and matter.  The Naturalist caricatures the theist as an escapist who ascribes any and all mysteries to the work of an omnipotent God.  But is the Naturalist innocent of this charge?  When faced with evidence that does not fit his theories, the Naturalist shrugs it off, confident that there is a perfectly good naturalistic explanation for the mystery and that future research will eventually bring the explanation to light.  In other words, the Naturalist has blind faith in undemonstrated naturalistic causes and blindly assumes that man's science will eventually penetrate the mystery.  The Naturalist's religion is thus no better than the theist's religion at explaining the unexplained.

Modern man has many unsolved mysteries.  For example, how did matter originate?  To say that it all came from a "Big Bang" a few billion years ago does not explain anything.  What caused this "Big Bang"?  Did time, matter, energy and the various laws of nature simply "spring into existence" out of nothingness, apart from a Creator?  Such a suggestion is utter foolishness, for "nothingness" is not able to give birth to "somethingness".  If nothing had existed at the initial instant of the "Big Bang", then nothing would exist now.  Every effect must have a cause, and the "Big Bang", if it actually occurred, must have been caused by something.

Scientists sometimes give utterly ridiculous explanations for the "Big Bang", suggesting, for example, that nothingness simultaneously gave birth to equal amounts of matter and antimatter. What is wrong with such an explanation is that it fails to take energy into account—when matter and antimatter combine, they do not result in nothing—instead, all the matter is converted to energy in accordance with Einstein's famous equation: E=MC2.  Had there been nothing at all at the commencement of the "Big Bang", then there would be no energy available to convert into matter and antimatter.

The average scientist of today is largely unconcerned about such questions.  His "science" cannot probe the cause of the "Big Bang", and he has no problem accepting on blind faith alone that the "Big Bang" somehow just happened by purely materialistic causes.  Yet, he will criticize the theist for his belief in a God who has eternally existed.  Why is belief in an eternal, omnipotent God considered to be escapism when the Naturalist must sweep his mysteries under the rug of a hypothetical "Big Bang" that he cannot explain?

http://members.toast.net/puritan/articles/EvolutionIsNotScience.htm#Ref59

Physicalism is the philosophy that says that nothing exists except the physical. It says that everything in physical nature can be explained by, and only by, other things in physical nature. This philosophy dominates physical science. Physicalists aver that they are open to new evidence, but breaking through to a new paradigm is extraordinarily unlikely, given the firm resistance to it.

Physicalism is a dangerous philosophy, because it denies any empirical basis for regarding humans as anything more than material phenomena of an uncaring universe. If we are nothing more than complex arrangements of atoms, then on what basis should we declare that humans have inalienable rights to life and liberty?

Physicalism has no explanation for why there is something instead of nothing. This may at first seem to be a pointless issue, but in fact, it is the proverbial elephant in the room.
Physics asserts forthrightly that “no thing” can arise from nothing. Matter cannot, energy cannot, space and time cannot. Yet, we observe all of these. They exist. How did that come about?

Physicalism has no genuine explanation of what an experience actually is, or how an enduring self can exist.

It also entails determinism: the dogma everything is a consequence of pre-existing circumstances.

Scientism is ‘science’ viewed only through Physicalist filters. To claim that the resulting view is slanted would be a significant unsderstatement.