Howdy Paul:

"The important thing is that people are honest in their reasons for assigning the probability numbers to their beliefs and open in their declarations of those numbers. If this attitude were instuted, I think 99.9 percent of all arguments would evaporate."

I totally agree. Openness to other ideas and openness about one's own ideas is a great foundation for harmonious coexistence. However...

"I think it would help clear things up if we made a distinction between 'religion' and 'religious organizations...Religion...is a system of beliefs held by an individual...With this definition, science gets sort of "religified"."

I can't totally buy this one, sorry. :) I think religious thinking is better defined as beliefs on origins and meaning which incorporate a designer or at least a purpose. You can stretch the meaning to include scientific thinking, but I think then you lose the meaning of both 'religion' and 'science.' If I defined 'science' so loosely that, for example, a man who gets ripped off at a car dealership never goes back there again, and then I defined him as a scientist because he exercised the scientific method and deriving opinions from observations, it may be VERY technically true, but not very in a semantic sense.

• Thanks -- some clarification: - pmartin - August 4, 2002 - 21:15 UTC