Scientism, and the conflation of reality with matter

An error I see a lot in the writings by Materialists is the conflation of reality with matter. You'd think the idea would be an obvious fallacy, but it seems to be a popular notion.

Quotes and comments;

Angry Atheists Arrogate Authority in Science
1. August 28, 2008 — Can science contribute to religious studies? Only to destroy it, think some atheistic scientists. “In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism,” announced Matthew Cobb and Jerry Coyne in a letter to Nature. [1.]

- Someone needs to tell these guys that science isn't a person; and thus has nothing to say about religion or atheism. (Materialists like to reify science to give it a singleness of identity and belief; a 'singleness' it does not have. They thus try to turn 'science' into an all knowing, all wise god.)
- one wonders how a little speck of matter has any foundation for making such a grandiose claim.

2. “There is a fundamental conflict here, one that can never be reconciled until all religions cease making claims about the nature of reality.”

- The intellectual level of this complaint struggles to reach the pinnacle of high school sophistication. [It depends entirely on the old debating trick of defining your terms in such a way you can't lose.] First of all we need to ask them to define religion, and then ask why we should accept their definition. In most cases atheists mean Christianity, but won't come out and say so. The trouble with this 'religion' talk is that religion is an obsolete term. (Maybe if they'd kept up with philosophy they'd know this.) The only term that has any meaning in the modern world is world view. The authors want to distinguish between Materialism (good) and 'religion' (bad) but this is nothing but a debating trick. All people have a worldview, and these guys are no exception. (Darwinists love to play word games, to use vague terms, to engage in equivocation, and other similar maneuvers; all with the purpose of exempting themselves from their own criterion of criticism.)

- There are many things that aren't material, but are nontheless real. (e.g. reason, logic, truth, information, justice, goodness, numbers, equations, perfect circles, thought, words, language, etc. Not to mention God.) To conflate matter and reality, in the face of all this evidence is surely a sign Materialism is a fallacious doctrine.

- Maybe these guys would like to define reality for us. Maybe they'd like to tell us how they know reality exists, or how they can know it exists, or how they can know what it is. (It's laughable for human beings to claim they know the nature of ultimate reality.) How do they know that reality is singular and not plural? How do they know reality is objective and not subjective? How do they know reality is unchanging? How do they know there's only one level to reality? There may be many levels of reality. [I could go on and on here, as this is an impossibly complex question.]

- Pretending materialism has some special status as a worldview is a joke. It's as much a 'religion' as Christianity or Buddhism. (A worldview can be briefly defined as a network of beliefs that seek to answer all the major questions of human existence... in a coherent and non-contradictory manner.) Materialists used to insist that Humanism was a religion, now they deny it. It's hard to take this kind of self serving waffling on the issue seriously.

- Materialists hate the idea of worldview, because they know theirs is incoherent and self-contradictory. (e.g. the chasm that exists between 'fact' and value.) The comical thing is that although they obviously have a worldview, they deny that they do.

- I can tell them right now, that no 'religion' (including Materialism) is going to stop making claims about reality. They're living in a dream world if they think this is going to happen. (Or maybe I should have said in a state of unreality.)

Notes;
1. Angry Atheists Arrogate Authority in Science Creation/Evolution Headlines 08/28/2008
August 28, 2008 — Can science contribute to religious studies? Only to destroy it, think some atheistic scientists. “In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism,” announced Matthew Cobb and Jerry Coyne in a letter to Nature.
- Cobb and Coyne were taking issue with Nature’s editorial July 17 about John Templeton’s legacy.
2. "A worldview is no good if you can't live it.'' - Ronald Nash [lecture series; History of Philosophy and Christian thought/Worldviews]
- The Materialist wview can't be lived out; i.e. people can't live in terms consistent with this wview.