Loftus on Scientism

Christian apologists will futilely try to scare their progeny with the boogeyman of scientism, declaring their faith victorious because they claim her critics think science can test everything, which is a self-refuting claim. But it’s only a self-refuting claim if we say we’re certain science can test everything. For if we leave room for reasonable doubt then it’s not self-defeating to say science can probably test everything, or even that science can test almost everything. For otherwise, how can we test whether or not science can test everything? What kind of experiment could test that? It wouldn’t be an empirical one, as far as we can speculate. Such a conclusion must come from probabilistic reasoning. So I admit there is at least one claim that cannot be tested by empirical science. I don’t know how many others there are, nor does anyone else, but there are probably a few more. What does it feel like to be a bat? What are the contents of someone's subconscious mind? What does an empirical investigation of an event in the historical past tell us? Science probably can't perform tests to answer those questions, at least, I find it hard to think it can. But maybe in the future scientists will be able to do so, by creating a virtual reality bat-like simulator, or finding a way to know the contents of subconscious minds, or by time-travel back into the past. Some say empirical science cannot test conceptual questions like whether or not square circles can exist, for they are known merely by reflecting on the terms involved. But this just means some questions can be answered independently of science. It doesn’t mean science cannot answer them. Scientists can always try making such an object!

Thoughts? Can you say this better? What can be legitimately disputed about what I wrote?