Easy Questions for "Scientism"

Victor Reppert poses questions that he supposes are a difficult struggle for people with a "science-oriented philosophy".  This is the trope of scientism, perpetuated by theists as a straw man, which they can then attack as being an unreasonable and overly limited approach to knowledge.  Victor should know better.  I've discusses this numerous times (for example, here and here), and others such as Jerry Coyne have as well.

What theists call scientism is just an epistemology.  Rather than using made-up words to identify this epistemology, I prefer to use the term empiricism, and the people who adhere to it are called empiricists.  But using philosophically respectable terms like that doesn't fit the narrative that the theists want to purvey.

Theists can't simply accept what empiricists say about what we believe and why we believe it.  Theists insist on telling us what we believe.  That way, they can define it in their own manner so as to make it sound as absurd as possible.  When Coyne says "Science is the only real way of gaining knowledge about the world", theists morph that into "Science is the only real way of gaining knowledge".  And then they proceed to ridicule him (as well as all scientifically minded atheists) for having such a limited view.  They claim scientism allows no appreciation for arts and humanities, for example.  This is an outright lie that isn't applicable to empiricism, but the trope is so pervasive that many theists have convinced themselves that it's true.  The fact is that all humans who live in this world have equal access to all these things.

At the same time, theists insist that they have other kinds of knowledge that is unavailable to empiricism.  This is, of course, knowledge of the realm of godly and immaterial entities.  This broader realm of knowledge that theists claim supposedly includes answers to questions of "why?", and "what is the purpose?".  And those answers invariably include God as the ultimate explanation.  So we see Victor smugly posing these questions to empiricists, while laboring under the delusion that they will struggle to produce a satisfactory answer:

1) Why do I exist?
2) Why is there a material world at all?
3) What should I do with my life?
4) Is there a given purpose for my life that I ought to fulfill?
5) What kinds of social and economic structures promote happiness the most?
6) Is my wife faithful?

His presumption is that scientism gives us no easy way to answer these questions.  I'll give it a try, anyway.

1) Why do I exist?
The implicit assumption in this question is that there is a reason for the existence of humans.  This, in turn, assumes that humans were created intentionally.  A naturalist view makes no such assumption.  And therefore there is no answer to the question.  This is rather like asking someone "When did you stop beating your wife?"  Any direct answer to the question would be unsatisfactory, because it buys into the implicit assumption that he was involved in wife-beating.  I don't buy into the assumption that humans were created intentionally.  Science gives us reason to believe that humans evolved through purely natural processes, with no intention involved.

2) Why is there a material world at all?
This is the same as the first question.  It assumes a reason, which assumes intentional creation.  Again there is no justified reason to make such an assumption.  "God did it" is not a satisfactory explanation for anything, unless you have a psychological need to have a reason for the existence of the world.  As far as we can tell through observation, the existence of physical reality is just a brute fact.

3) What should I do with my life?
That depends entirely on what my goals are.  And please note that I don't need any God to set goals for my life.  I can do that for myself, thank you.  But for the theist, self-direction appears to be out of the question, so they need to have their goals "revealed" to them in some manner.  It could be that their religious handlers tell them what goals to pursue, or that they have some kind of communication with God, which really amounts to a subjective experience in which they play the roles of both speaker and listener.  As for me, I choose to do something that I hope will have some positive impact on the lives of others.

4) Is there a given purpose for my life that I ought to fulfill?
No.  I decide for myself what purpose I have, if any.  There is no purpose given to me from some external authority.  I am free to live aimlessly or to make my own meaning and set my own goals.  There is a theistic trope that says "you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'".  But I don't buy that.  'Ought' is a natural consequence of our goals.  If I want to achieve goal G, then I ought to take action A in pursuit of that goal.  But the idea that there is some external source of things I ought to do is just another theistic assumption.

5) What kinds of social and economic structures promote happiness the most?
I think Victor expects the atheist to hang his head and admit in shame that religion promotes happiness.  Yes, it does.  That's the biggest reason religion persists in the age of science.  It fulfills certain psychological needs, and gives people a sense of community.  Of course, that has nothing to do with the truth of religious beliefs.  There are other social structures that also promote happiness.  Some of them provide tangible benefits, and some exist for no reason other than the fact that people enjoy participating in them.  Most any kind of social group, including atheist organizations, can be said to promote happiness for its participants.

6) Is my wife faithful?
This is a puzzler.  Does Victor think the theist can answer this question better than an empiricist?  Could it be that theistic epistemology gives someone a better way to know whether his wife is cheating?  Hardly.  A theist may have faith that his wife is faithful, but the same could be said of an atheist.  Faith, in this case, simply means "trust'.  But simple trust does not prove the truth of anything.  The best way to know for sure is to have empirical evidence.  Unlike all the other questions in this set, this one can be answered definitely by knowing what your wife's activities are, and that can be known by observation.

That wasn't so hard, was it?  The truth is that theism doesn't answer the questions any better than empiricism, but empiricism provides a more realistic framework from which pursue knowledge, while theism only gives its adherents an unjustified belief that they know the answers.