PZ Myers on Jake Young on John Dewey:

I'm a little late to this tea party, since Jason Rosenhouse and Larry Moran have already trampled on the biscuits and kicked over the teakettle, but I have to register my disagreement with this polite and sincere article by Jake Young. It's got several elements that bug me badly.

First of all, don't try to tell the New Atheists (insert obligatory detestation of the term here) what the New Atheists believe unless you've actually got some understanding of what the New Atheists believe. This is a mistake I'm seeing repeatedly now.

The New Atheist Camp (for lack of a better term) asserts that science and atheism are one. Religion and science are not internally consistent. Any attempt to recognize religion within a scientific framework is appeasement of superstition and is by extension damaging to the scientific enterprise. We might as well publish statements we know to be lies in scientific journals.

No. Once again, science is a method. It's a general set of procedures that rest on skepticism, induction, empiricism, and naturalism. Atheism is a conclusion. We look at the universe using the tools of science, and it does not fit any description of the universe derived from religious perspectives: we therefore reject religious dogma. We also see that the nature of the universe does not reflect any of the orthodox conceptions of what a god-ruled universe would look like. We arrive at the conclusion that there is no god.

Science=method. Atheism=conclusion. They're different.  [read more]