Beyond Belief Session 8—Charles Harper

This speech brought up some interesting points. He states that scientism is not real science. It is simply the religion of science. In my observation of this conference so far it is full of scientists that practice scientism. All the speeches seem to be the same thing over and over. First the speaker states what type of science they do then they try to show how smart they are. They say why they are right and how scientific their research has been. They show how they have proven that other people are wrong and what is wrong with what they said.

After they say this they religiously state why religion is wrong. They point out all the faults of religion and the problems that it has brought about is society today. They do not speak of the ideologies of these religions but just of the problems that the followers of these religions have. They talk about the problems that people bring to religion and do not show at all the religion has brought any problems to people. They state that science should be the only thing that is taught and that anything that has no physical, empirical proof has no place in the school system or in everyday life. However there is more to life that just the physical. There are things like love or joy or pain or depression that are not physical and do not have a scientific basis but they are real. They are things that have more impact on people’s lives than many of the things of science.