Religious scientism & Fidism: where does it come from and can it be justified?

[MindOverMatter2]

Religious Scientism = a person who believes that the only true knowledge we can have is scientific knowledge. He or she shares this in common with Naturalistic Scientism. However, in addition to this they conclude that Gods existence can be known through the scientific method.

The other extreme is “fidism”.

Fidism or faith-ism = those who fail to justify their faith with science, reason, or experience, or feel that such acts of knowledge are theologically unsound, believe that faith without reason, science, or experience is entirely legitimate.

Where do these ideas come from?

A few religious members on this forum appear to hold these beliefs. I don’t think that there is any justification for holding these views. Does anyone care to defend or challenge these views?

 

[sw85]

It should be fideism, and it would be more properly understood as the belief that reason is insufficient to determine God’s existence. That comes from John Duns Scotus’ and William of Ockham’s rejection of classical essentialism. Both men should have been burned as heretics; their ideas were the rift that allowed modernism to slip into the world.

I’m not familiar with religious scientism (scientism yes, but not of a religious variety). Perhaps William Paley would be the forefather of it? He proposed a probabilistic argument for God’s existence that conceded the materialists’ assumption of a mechanistic universe.

Both are intellectually bankrupt, IMO.