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To continue with Nick Smyth's response to criticisms, Nick asks:

About the same as if I was told I was full of bollocks ... particularly if that bollocks was something that I sincerely and deeply believed in and made up a significant part of my personal and social identification ... the way religion acts for many people. What if, on the other hand, I was merely told that I mistakenly believed that I was born in Lithuania when, in fact, I was born in Latvia?

I find it incredible that Smyth somehow thinks that people will feel less "exclude[ed] ... from social and political power" if they are told by government that their religion is bollocks than if they are merely told it is not science and, therefore, their religion cannot be taught in secular science classes.

Nick makes the assertion that, in order to make "a valid demarcation of 'science' from other fields ('non-' and 'pseudo-science') [we] must provide necessary and jointly sufficient criteria for science'." I've already responded that I think that science is a sorites heap and the existence of gray areas is no bar to speaking intelligibly of broad categories. But don't forget that Nick is doing exactly the same thing himself. It is, according to Nick, an "obvious truism" that science "deliver[s] truths about the world" and religion (in the form of creationism/ID) doesn't. I would like to see his necessary and jointly sufficient criteria for Truth^TM.

Even if we grant Nick's contention that a satisfying philosophical definition of science is necessary to demark it from non-science, as a social criteria for determining what may, under our Constitution, be imposed by the majority on the minority in the area of school curriculum, Nick's scheme is a disaster.

It is clear that Nick thinks there is a demarcation to be had between science and the sort of religion that many people in the US hold to. The question is why he thinks its better social policy to defend the broader, even less easily definable categories, that, in fact, go to the very heart of religious belief, than defending the less fuzzy categories that do not strike at the core of people's constitutionally guaranteed right to believe in the religion of their choice?

More to follow as I can get to it.
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