Irrational rationalism

I heard some uppity physicist and an aged philosopher talking on the tail end of the Today programme on Radio 4 yesterday.

I call the physicist uppity as he was claiming that science could answer all the big questions, and declaring non-scientifically that the question 'why are we here' was a non-question as it was simply an accident.

Silly man! He failed on two counts - one making a philosophical declaration (it is simply an accident) when claiming to be basing his thinking on rational and empirical sciences; the second failing to recognise that believing in empirical evidence is also a philosophical stance. For example, i could easily maintain that we are programmed by some malevolent (or benign) programmer to think that we can experience reality, but in fact we don't; that position is simply not able to be addressed empirically: the evidence would look the same either way.

It's the fact that such scientists don't even get how limited their view of reality is that really irritates me - that and the way they are adulated by the media and others with a secularising agenda.