How to Respond to an Arrogant Catholic Newspaper

Francis Philips recently wrote an article called "How to respond to a young friend who has come under Dawkins's spell" for the Catholic Herald. In the article, Philips presents the following sort of argument (where I'm probably being more charitable than I should be):

1. Scientism, the view that science is the only legitimate source of knowledge, is false.
2. If (1) then science cannot tell us about whether God exists.
3. Therefore, science cannot tell us about whether God exists.

In support of premise (1), Philips only offers the story of a neuroscientist who recently made a visit to Lourdes and remarked that they had not ruled out the possibility for people to have immaterial spiritual experiences of some kind (whatever that is supposed to mean).

In response, I will first discuss scientism and it's relation to theology. Then, I will discuss religious experience and whether such experiences give us good reasons to conclude that God is likely to exist. I will forego discussing whether or not Philips accurately represents the view she attributes to Dawkins*.

On the Cosmological Argument

There is a certain deductive argument for the existence of God that is particularly more popular than others. Unlike other purely deductive arguments for God's existence, the Cosmological Argument is one which is readily used by the laity, albeit not under that name. Since the time of Saint Thomas Aquinas, it has been an established part of Catholic doctrine. In fact, there is a certain Catholic tradition which regards the existence of God as something which is deductively provable without reference to the Bible, church authorities, or faith. Instead, from mere recourse to logic alone, the doctrine states that we should be able to deduce God's existence. Several such  deductive arguments were proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, and other scholars from the medieval period, often drawing from earlier work (most notably Aristotle and Plato.) Later, inductive and/or abductive arguments joined the fray, including William Paley's 19th century divine watchmaker argument (which would lead to its modern incarnation as Intelligent Design.)