Might I suggest that we adopt the attitude of a character in a novel due out early next year? "I don't believe in believe in."

What the fellow means is that what a person believes is what a person does. Only a fool or an insane person would deliberately behave in a manner contrary to the way he or she believe things actually work. There remain frauds, those who pretend to believe something they know is not true, for perceived personal advantage.

Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

Hedges seems correct in his assessments. "Science" is the de facto new religion, headed by a caste of people who can make the most absurd declarations without being questioned, and whose deliberations are not available to any but specialists.

Please note that one may say such things and love science. All knowledge is holy. The problem is not with science, but with many who proclaim themselves scientists. The understandings of science are quite profound, and the vision of the universe it presents is far more stirring than previous visions. But it is not in conflict with faith. That attitude is a holdover from quarrels that go back to the battles of the church with thinkers like Galileo and Darwin. It is no longer necessary, and in fact is wasteful.

"Consciousness Explained" and the "God Delusion"--these titles are self-evidently hubristic. Dennet makes egregious errors in physics in many of his "thought experiments." Dawkins--well, he has come up with a number of stimulating and useful metaphors, but what principle has he demonstrated, what actual science has he done? Is there anything called Dawkins's Law or the Dawkins effect?

The following is a true story, reported in Discover magazine. Someone who name I don't remember invented a sort of electronic helmet which he said stimulated the portion of the brain that caused what we thought of as "divine" experiences. Notice that no one has yet demonstrated clearly that such an area exists, and that even if one did there are plenty of ways of thinking about it that do not deny faith. The fellow himself said that his helmet "worked" on only 40 percent of the people who tried it. What? Dawkins tried the helmet and had no transcendent mental experience. His conclusion? There is no god. I consider this extremely sloppy thinking. Might there not be other conclusions--for example, that the helmet doesn't do what its creator says it does?

There is an easy way to detect fundamentalists: Declare that you accept the ways and workings of science, but that for reasons of your own you have faith, which however does not cause you to wish to force others to your will. Those who vilify you, whether Christianoids or self-described atheists, are fundamentalists.

My daughter is an atheist. I am not. And yet we have much the same moral outlook, based on respect and empathy. As far as I am concerned, she is as religious as a person need be.

As Jesus himself said: By their fruits shall you know them.

And no, I don't "believe in" the virgin birth, or the age of the Earth as a mere 6000 years.

@Bobfunk

You said that faith is the opposite of reason. Given such an assumption, that faith is necessarily credulous, one can see why a person would disavow faith.

Since this assumption is widespread, I am not so much quibbling with you as using your statement to say that I disagree. It is probably pointless to do so, but I have vowed to contest this assumption wherever I find it.

Perhaps it would be useful to make a distinction between "religion" and "faith." Both are merely words, true. However, words, though they may be inadequate, may be used honorably.

I find it helpful to think of religion as a human creation. It is the accretion of ceremony and practice purporting to be divinely ordained, usually around insights that were originally quite powerful. But it is a human creation.

Faith, for me, is quite different. I have come to the reasoned conclusion that there is something holy about existence. Sometimes I doubt those conclusions (reason is aware of its own limits). Faith is what causes me to persist in the behavior implied by my best guesses as to the essential nature of existence. In other words, to try to remain courteous, kind, and empathetic even if I receive no personal reward for such behavior. By these definitions, faith is available even to those who are not religious.

The argument about what outlook visits more cruelty on the world is spurious, it seems to me. The actual choice is whether I myself will be cruel.

I see god, if such an entity exists, if "existence" is somehow more than a human definition, as essentially unknowable. Indeed, most religious traditions proclaim a similar idea.

From that assumption it follows that EVERY attempt to declare the nature of god must be inadequate. Science is a human creation. It cannot know everything, prove everything. That is not its value.

Do not intend to argue but to report. I would find it wrong to insist that others agree.

As usual, ordinary people suffer while the people who engineered this trouble get a walk. Okay, let them. We don't have to punish them. But could we please put something in place going forward that works and takes care of those who are just trying to make a living? Perhaps we could begin if those who have so long profited from the big casino of the market realized in what general contempt they are held.

Excessive wealth will shortly become, for most of us, the sign of a diseased being. In some cases this may not be fair, but it will happen. (Of course, excessive poverty for millions upon millions has long been considered fair.)