One reason science is epistemically incomatible with religion is the fact that in science it is not legitimate to form strong affirmative beliefs when the evidence is missing or thin. You see this over and over again reading Why Evolution is True – it’s full of ‘we don’t know the answer to this,’ ‘the evidence is not clear about that,’ ‘thirty years ago we had no idea but now the evidence is abundant’ – you get a sense of how cumulative it all is and how gaps remain gaps pending better evidence.

Religion is entirely unlike that – and that’s not a leap, not a worldview, not metaphysics; it’s epistemology. It’s ‘how do you know that?’

Some examples from WEIT … Read the rest

Tariq Ramadan explains things.

My position on homosexuality is quite clear…Islam, as Christianity, as Judaism, as even the Dalai Lama…[are] not accepting of homosexuality, saying that this is forbidden according to the principles of our religion…My position, with homosexuals, is to say, “We don’t agree with what you are doing, but we respect who you are,” which I think is the only true liberal position that you can have.

Why no, actually, that’s not the only true liberal position you can have. On the contrary. The true liberal position would be to look carefully at those ‘principles of our religion’ and ask whether they are good principles or not, in secular, human, this-world terms. The true liberal position would … Read the rest

Okay, so life is shit for women in Poland.

When Alicja Tysiac became pregnant in February 2000, three eye specialists told her having another baby could put her eyesight at serious risk. But neither the specialists nor her GP would authorise an abortion. After giving birth later that year, Ms Tysiac suffered a retinal haemorrhage and feared she [might] go blind. She now wears glasses with thick powerful lenses but she cannot see objects more than a metre and a half (5ft) away.

Yeah, so? If she didn’t want to go blind she shouldn’t have gotten pregnant! Not in Poland anyway.… Read the rest

Susan Haack makes a very interesting point in ‘Irreconcilable Differences? The Troubled Marriage of Science and Law. She makes many such points, but one in particular grabbed my attention.

Because of its adversarial character, the legal system tends to draw in as
witnesses scientists who are in a sense marginal – more willing than most of their
colleagues to give an opinion on the basis of less-than-overwhelming evidence;
moreover, the more often he serves as an expert witness, the more unbudgeably
confident a scientist may become in his opinion. An attorney obligated to make
the best possible case for his client will have an incentive to call on those
scientists who are ready to accept an answer to some