Over the years the scientific world has done a lot to keep us from believing that we'll ever have any contact whatsoever with any authentic supernatural phenomena. Of course we know that supernatural phenomena is not scientific because it is not possible to replicate in a controlled environment. This lack of verification procedure combined with the rare reliable reported instances of the supernatural gives us good reason to believe that no authentic supernatural phenomena actually exist.
In addition, many phenomena once considered to be mystical have been able to be captured and replicated by the scientific world. It's much more effective to grab a telephone to talk to someone across the world rather than use some sort of magic spell to get the task done. Rightfully, science has replaced religion and superstition in intricately explaining countless phenomena of the natural world and using that knowledge for the benefit of most of mankind. But despite this, the scientific world can still place itself in the danger of creating a dogma of its own, replacing a lot of the dogma it once eradicated. This dogma might be an improvement over ancient mystical dogma, but it's still dogma nonetheless.
The following four instances are indications of when the scientific community has unwittingly adopted a dogma of its own:
(1) When science crosses the FACT-VALUE threshold, it has at least partially turned into dogma. It has put a foot outside of the limited domain of scientific ability. Science can only explain what things ARE. It can NEVER can explain what things SHOULD be. It never explains ideals. Imagine if the Michaelson-Morley experiment yielded the results that SHOULD have happened. We might have never discovered special relativity.
Unfortunately, this means that science has nothing to say about morality. In fact, science views religion and morality both in EXACTLY the same way: non-scientific. You can do some really EVIL science experiments, as some have done in the past, and it still counts as science, passing every requirement of the scientific method to more accurately determine how nature operates, even though such experiments violate every moral law you can think of.
Whether the scientific world knows it or not, when you ascribe a special rule that human suffering should be avoided, that is reaching out to philosophy or religion, not science. Basic morality is good dogma of course, but it is still clearly dogma. It's not scientific. Morality has no standard units of measurement, even after centuries of attempts. Just as logic alone cannot be used to justify religious faith as real, scientific procedures alone cannot be used to justify morality as real.
(2) Recall that the scientific method is a tool, a process. Designed to arrive at facts and facts alone. When you start believing this tool has emotions and CARES ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT YOU FOLLOW it, we run into dogma again. You wouldn't say a hammer cares whether you use it correctly or not. Science is the same way. We can't pretend that science itself gets offended if you badmouth it or use it incorrectly. Science doesn't care.
(3) When the scientific community starts pushing it as MANKIND'S DUTY to pursue scientific thought, again, dogma. Science can tell you if taking a certain path is effective in reaching a goal, but it can't tell you which goals you should pursue. It can show you how to design circuits powerful enough to cause you harm, but it can't tell you that you shouldn't design such circuits. It can show you whether or not eating your vegetables can increase your life expectancy, but it can't tell you whether or not having a higher life expectancy is something you should strive for.
(4) And finally, when you start believing that science is the ONLY PATH to truth, yep, dogma for sure. Science claims that its path can yield reliable, consistent results. These results can certainly be interpreted as being indicative of a truth. But it only really shows evidence. Maybe extremely convincing evidence. But the jump from extremely convincing evidence to absolute non-refutable truth is a (sometimes obvious) judgment call that real actual science doesn't claim to make.
I wouldn't say that believing convincing scientific evidence to be absolute truth is itself unscientific, because I think it still is, but going with the converse and believing that if something is absolutely true then it MUST be able to be examined scientifically is not claimed by science. It's not even claimed by logic. The statement if A then B doesn't imply its converse, if B then A.
In fact, mathematically at least, Godel showed rigorously in his incompleteness theorems that unprovable truths can indeed exist and it's certain that we will never find a path that will enable us to know all truths from that path alone. Scientific processes are the best-known paths to truth of course, but it's a big jump to say they're the only path or that no path exists outside of them. Particularly when we are limited to only five senses that can be used to interact with the external world.
The four instances of scientific dogma above are all common in religious dogma.
Let's summarize to get a better look -
Instance 1: science tells us the way things should be even if they aren't that way
Instance 2: science cares about you following it
Instance 3: science is mankind's duty
Instance 4: science is the only path to truth
Looks familiar to me. I certainly see them in the religion I follow.
Real science claims NONE of these things. It only claims that we can use a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning to design procedures that make better predictions and provide more accurate explanations about the behavior of natural phenomena. That's it. But even that is a HECK of a lot of value.
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