I mostly wrote this as a humorous piece to satirize the perspective called “scientism,” an extreme branch of the philosophy of logical positivism. The latter holds that only beliefs supported by empirical evidence are valid; scientism holds that science is the only source of truth and nothing can be believed that is gleaned apart from it.

Meaning that mathematics, philosophy, art, and many other disciplines cannot be trusted.

Obviously, this is not a position that philosophers take very seriously. It doesn’t pass its own tests, since it is impossible to scientifically prove that only science yields truth.

As a tongue-in-cheek dig at scientism, I wrote a piece that shows many things once taught as scientific fact are now considered untrue. Truth is true, or it wouldn’t be true, so science can’t be the beacon of truth since the conclusions of it are always being challenged and revised.

Truth corresponds to reality.  This means that truth doesn’t change.  If it was true in 4000 b.c., it is still true now.

Atheists frequently insist that only science can discover the truth.

If truth is truth, then that means if a truth is uncovered by science, then it’s always true, right?

Nope. Read the rest of this entry →