Indeed, science becomes counterproductive, because it exposes modernists to the existential conundrum. As Nietzsche put it, the question is how we should live after the death of God. Reason frees us from theistic dogma, but it also deprives us of any conviction in some worthwhile purpose to motivate us to freely direct our talents toward one end rather than another. The more we apply reason to model some phenomenon, the more we break it down into impersonal mechanisms, and thus the more illusory becomes our naïve self-image, according to which life is full of meaning, purpose, and moral value. What is the utility of Enlightenment and Liberty if the objectifying rationality that enlightens and liberates us forces on us a vision of universal
undeadness, entailing not just the absurdity of theistic faith but the superficiality of the very concepts of morality, happiness, and personhood?
The pragmatic slogan in question betrays the new atheist’s narrow-minded
scientism. In the wider view, science doesn’t work at all. Arguably, the costs of science’s efficacy outweigh the benefits. Granted, if all you care about is the cognitive domain in which science has prevailed, you won’t be concerned with the social implications of naturalism. But scientism doesn’t end there, since the naturalist must then reduce the concept of
caring to some neurological mechanism. Moreover, she must interpret all concepts and thus all alleged symbols in scientific theories as being
perfectly meaningless, since there’s no room for such a personal quality as intentionality in this exclusive version of the naturalist’s ontology, which consists only of more and more complex arrangements of causal relations between particles. Scientistic naturalism is thus the proverbial serpent that eats its tail.