I thought I might add to your comment and get youridea from this. I was reading Alvin Plantinga, considered one of our most immanent philosopher, located at Notre Dame in Ohio. He essentially posits a compelling insite. The scientific materialist might respond to the notion of scientism depending on theism as a matter of historical happenstance, but modern science was spawned by theological conviction, but the materialist says they no longer need that theological baggage, and now stand on their own. They say we no longer are haunted by the pandemonium of the spirits, so science no longer requires the tutelage of religion. They say, "We, scientifically, have come of age, and now can put those childish things such as theology aside.
However, this sanguine view does not stand up to careful philosophical scrutiny, as Alvin Plantinga has shown in his Warrant and Proper Function.Here Plantinga demonstrates that scientific materialism, without a designer who intended man to be equipped with an aptitude for truth, leads inexorably to an epistemological catastrophy, the 'epstemic defeat" of all of the materialist's aspirations for knowledge. I will give an oversimpified summary of Plantiga's argument. The materialist has no option but to believe that humanity is solely the product of an undirected and unplanned Darwinian process-random changes culled by natural selection. Natural selection 'cares' only about behavior that produces and promotes survival and reproduction; it has no interest in truth as such. There is no good reason to believe that an aptitude for truth is the only way, or even an especially likely mechanism, for producing survival-enhansing behavior. For example human beings may generally come to believe that fellow human beings have intrinsic dignity and worth and that objective moral values and their attendant obligations exist. Given naturalism, these beliefs would be false-even if holding such beliefs helped humans better survive. The knowledge that the causal pathways leading to our present beliefs lacks any intrinsic propensity to promote truth gives us a compelling and indefeasible reason for doubting all the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, whether of perception, memory,, logical thought, logical reasoning, or scientific inference. Hense, the scientific materialist cannot reasonably, in the end, claim to know that the results of science (or any other human mode of knowledge) are in fact true.
The materialist position inevitably leads to self-contradiction, as in the above example. Although the cited immaterial beliefs evidently have survival value (as human history suggests), they have to be false in principle given the presupposition of Darwinist natural selection. But if they're false, then how can they have survival value? It makes no sense.
Indeed as you say Texas Songwriter, "the scientific materialist cannot reasonably, in the end, claim to know that the results of science (or any other human mode of knowledge) are in fact true."
For one thing, truth is immaterial; and so are the laws of nature and the moral laws; so are logic and reason, mathematics, scientific theories themselves, including Darwin's theory. Materialists cannot account for such non-phenomenal, immaterial aspects of reality, so try to ignore them. Yet then they will claim that their scientific findings are "in fact true." But how can anything be true if truth itself is denied?
This is the "epistemic defeat" of which Prof. Plantinga speaks.
It seems to me scientific materialists put themselves in a relentless, vicious epistemic and logical quandary by insisting that only the material exists.
Thank you ever so much, TS, for summing up Alvin Plantinga's argument for us. I think it's spot-on.