Sagan's "dragon in the garage" analogy summed it up for me and all in all I thought Demon Haunted World was excellent read.

Course, I'm something of a spiritual agnostic ... so if there's tenuous thread I'm usually trying to land on it.

And yet, you've gotten awfully fired up writing this post.

Heh. Indeed.

Josh: I'm adding Demon Haunted World to my reading list. It's a shame I've never gotten to it.

Well, if it makes you feel any better ... it was a book on tape for me :)

Jeez, I've been in the process of writing a post similar to this one. Next time I guess I have to be a little faster.

I, too, got pretty ticked about the skepticism post, but it seems to mostly go after big 'S' Skepticism, that is, as an ideology, rather than as a method. The method is discussed well in the aforementioned Demon Haunted World (the Baloney Detection Kit being a good synopsis of that method, and an invaluable tool for anyone).

Hope to have more on my blog soon. Good take, though I don't know if I'd call Only a Game a 'pretty nutty blog'. I mean, it's not Right On Games. It's pretty much a theory site with a bit too much credulity for my tastes sometimes.

Nowadays, I operate under the impression that Right On Games is parody. Even if it's not true, I sleep better at night.

Two points:

1. It's not so much religion I worry about - it's instinct - where people invoke their "gut" or "common sense" or the feeling something gives them. "I just don't feel that's true." "I saw into his soul." "I had to look him in the eye." "It's common sense." We've gotten to the point where religious people aren't making knowledge claims any more. They have a belief, and that's it. You can't fight that with a better knowledge claim. They're simply not interested in learning.

2. At one point, you say that science is "not a belief system," but later you claim "science requires us to believe in an objective reality, where something can be 'true' in that it accurately predicts outcomes." So I ask: does the scientific method assume certain things which are not themselves scientific?

When it comes to an objective reality, how would you falsify that? I can't think of a way.

Using belief was a bad choice of words. I think you can "believe" in a subjective reality. But that's as opposition to the objective world, which is (for non-schizophrenics) self-evident.

So I ask: does the scientific method assume certain things which are not themselves scientific?

Fundamentally no ... because revision is also inherit in the scientific method. Science doesn't ask you to "believe" anything ... it insists that you prove it and repeatedly so.

Course, it's the revision that many fanatics use to point out that science if fallible. Science can be wrong ... so why can't we be right, they say.

What they never do is take the next step of scientific thought and try to prove their right. Often these debates (Intelligent Design, etc.) are like a card game where only one side is willing to show their hand. Or even the fact that they have any cards.