I offer some clarifications regarding various prior comments about science:

Paul asserts: Dawkins’ underlying premise… is that there is a neutral position from which the truth claims, or more generally the reasonableness, of all forms of discourse can be assessed; and that this position is occupied by science. This implies that science with its talk of observation, hypothesis, confirmation and generalisation can adjudicate on the reasonableness of such human practices as football, chess, murder trials, shopping, jokes, poetry, art appreciation, psychotherapy, hypnotism, carpentry, war- and religion. Modern science investigates religious practices – morality, polity, liturgy, fellowship and so on. It can even compare practices on various empirical dimensions. But empirical science cannot assert that any particular practice is scientifically “best,” nor does it claim to be able to do so. It’s when religion begins asserting not just standards of practice but truth claims that science gets its hackles up. “We subscribe to morality M” is a practice; “God specifies that we subscribe to morality M” is a truth claim.

Paul further contends: The idea that theistic faith is about a probable God simply fails to take religion seriously as a human practice…belief in God is not a hypothesis at all. It is a certain way of looking at the world eg that we are created, that we are loved by our creator and owe him praise and obedience. There is no necessity about looking at the world in this way but most societies in human history have wanted to. Here again are practices (praise and obedience) justified by a truth claim (we are created by a creator). Paul justifies the truth claim empirically: most societies have wanted to look at the world this way. Scientists would acknowledge the “most societies” justification as a scientifically falsifiable hypothesis and a plausible explanation for widespread theistic practices.

Paul again: God’s existence is no more a question than the myriad facts embedded in our everyday discourse. Suppose somebody asserted that chairs go out of existence when unobserved and challenged me to prove that they don’t. This is a testable scientific hypothesis: “Chairs go out of existence when unobserved.” I think we can all imagine experimental protocols that would generate evidence for testing this hypothesis (even without using the observational proxy of a camera). Results of our studies couldn’t disprove the hypothesis, but we could render the hypothesis extremely unlikely on statistical grounds. That’s all science can assert about any hypothesis it investigates, and that’s all it claims it can assert.

As for whether Peter’s Manx sheerwater in the Outer Hebrides is or is not the devil I offer no opinion.

Peter says this: No serious-minded scientific thinker today would be so dogmatic as to assert that ‘science’ alone brings us into contact with the world as it really is. Paul disagreed, saying: My feeling is that this is the majority view not only within the scientific academic community but is also very widespread among educated people in the developed countries. I think it is also a major factor in the collapse of religious faith in the West, especially in the last 50 years. The data, at least in the US, suggest that this is an overstatement. Fewer than 10% of Americans are atheists or agnostics. According to this study, 80% of American college/university professors consider themselves to be “spiritual” people, and more than half of them believe that the spiritual dimension of faculty members’ lives does have a place in the classroom. Another study indicates that less than a quarter of American college/university professors regard themselves as atheists or agnostics.

Peter continued: The best that science has to offer is paradigms which provide a working description until another hypothesis arises. Scientific laws, paradigms and hypotheses aren’t truths inherent in the phenomena of the world; they’re pragmatic human inventions for making sense of phenomena. While scientific hypotheses are works of the imagination, that doesn’t mean that they’re merely ideas, philosophical speculations. What makes a hypothesis scientific is that it’s testable, and hence potentially falsifiable, by data. Some theories go into and out of favor on other than evidentiary grounds, but that’s usually the case when the data aren’t adequate (yet) to choose among the alternative theories. Some astrophysicists complain about string theory, ten dimensions, multiple universes, and so on because it’s not clear whether these ideas can be subjected to empirical falsification. If they can’t, they’re metaphysics or theology, not science.

Peter again: Dawkins more than anyone knows that the belief of a bygone scientific era in a progression from simple to complex forms of life, with the ‘building-blocks’ being the simpler forms, has been swept aside by the discovery that the ‘simpler’ forms are in themselves incredibly complex. And those relatively complex simpler forms evolved from less complex simpler forms, and so on. This remains the neo-Darwinist position. What’s been debunked is that there’s any inherent tendency in the universe to make progress from simple to complex. When everything starts simple and mutations vary randomly from the starting point, there’s an inevitable movement statistically toward the more complex. But it’s random movement, like a localized vacuum eventually coming into equilibrium with its surroundings through random motion of molecules. Still, there are lots of really simple organisms that are well-adapted to the environment and for which there is no environmental selection value for greater complexity.

Science no more gives us direct access to reality than anything else; it relies just as much on faith as religious belief - which has a better claim to provide us with such access. This should not be surprising, if God is taken to be the supreme fact in the universe, on which all other life depends. This sounds more like Peter’s closing prayer rather the summation of a supportable argument, so I’ll not comment further on it. Likewise Melody’s amen in “ship of fools.”

Back to Paul: I assume that when you (Peter) say that faith and science both rely on faith you mean that their foundations cannot be proven. This cannot be right because it implies that no statements within religion or science can be said to be unqualifiedly true but only probably true… the scientist who has established the boiling point of water as 100C does not add “on the assumption that my Bunsen burner did not go out of existence for two minutes during the experiment.” Everyone makes assumptions derived from probabilities built up from experience, then bases behaviors on these assumptions. The floor has never disappeared from under my feet before, so I keep walking as if I’m certain it won’t. I don’t have to have conscious awareness of these experience-based assumptions regarding the consistency of the physical world: my brain takes care of that for me in the background. If I lived in a more unstable physical environment (on thin ice, for example) I would navigate more tentatively – assuming I lived long enough to learn from experience.

I’m not sure I understand Peter’s comments about misplaced confidence. Having confidence that the Bunsen burner won’t disappear seems pretty well-placed, and it is falsifiable empirically.