I came across an article today (it's rather old now) from a person who is glorifying Scientism. This bothers me a bit as I can't imagine someone willfully embracing this idea. I always thought people who leaned too much on reason (in lieu of a balance between reason, feeling, and emotion) practiced Scientism on accident. Now, I learn that people actually WANT to practice Scientism! Here is a link to the article. You can judge for yourself.

The author of the article defines Scientism as "... a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an Age of Science."

So, by implication, this person wants to define love as a certain balance of chemicals, and explain what is right and good by assigning mathematical values to certain decisions (or worse, leaving it up to the politicians!!), or define compassion as simple utility.

This is all very dangerous. If we try to define our world, our emotions, and our ideals as simple mathematical equations then we are nihilistically flattening all of these realms into one and - effectively - destroying all but one of them. Don't read too much into this, but this very thing was Hitler's mistake. He thought about his idea of utopia and never stopped to think if he should implement it! If we run around making decisions about things that are clearly not in the realm of Science, then we are falling into the same trap (OK, I feel obliged to say that I'm not saying Scientism-ists are as bad as Hitler, just that they are making the same errors). If we try to use purely scientific terms to answer questions that start with "Should I...?" then we will always come up with the wrong answer.

Also, how are we to measure ethics in a world of Scientism? Are we to assign units of measure to pleasure and pain? Let's call the pain units "dolors" and the pleasure units "hedons". Therefore, I do not want to cut off my finger with a rusty saw because it would mean a higher dolor count than hedon count. Is this your idea of a good ethical system?!

Well, guess what? It's already been done! (Incidentally, this is where we get the word "hedonism"). Science clearly has no place in ethics, morals, or spirituality.

Keep your hands on your side of the car, Science.