Terms of derision are often used to dismiss others or the beliefs they espouse. Their use is, at its root, intellectual laziness. Rather than building a reasoned case for disagreement (or seeking a clearer understanding of the opposing idea), an epithet is launched to “settle” the disagreement. A relevant example is the way some seek to dismiss biblical counseling as “anti-science.”
To be truly anti-science means to dismiss the scientific method as a way of knowing about our world. There must be very few in the modern era who are entirely dismissive of the scientific method as a way of informing us about how things work in the natural world. The anti-science label is actually most often used to denounce someone who disagrees with a particular consensus opinion in science.[1] In other words, the person being dismissed by the label doesn’t reject science, but disagrees with a specific conclusion on a narrow matter that many scientists embrace. In like manner, when biblical counseling is dismissed as anti-science, it is being rejected because central tenants of biblical counseling are viewed as being in opposition to conclusions held by many scientists. These seem to center on three issues.
The Sufficiency of Scripture
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