> I once believed that a solid education in the
> scientific method all throughout everyone's school
> career would do the trick but now I'm not so sure.
Who knows? It hasn't been tried yet, at least in this country.
But this question is certainly worth scientific inquiry (if anyone knows of a research report on such an inquiry, I'd be happy to know about it): what, in this man's God's country, makes a secularist? Why, in the end, are some people apparently immune to God-talk when so many of their neighbor's swallow it whole?
PS - the only amendment I would make in the quote above is that I don't think there is such a thing as "the" scientific method, at least a single method which can be easily described. There are a lot of methods scientists learn and use, depending on the specific problems they are working on. But I do think that teaching "scientific appreciation," at least, analogous to "music" or "art appreciation," would help a lot. It would cut down on those chain letters. But any *decent* education (which this country's schools are rather short on) would help, for that matter.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ After the Buddha died, people still kept pointing to his shadow in a cave for centuries—an enormous, dreadful shadow. God is dead: but the way people are, there may be, for millennia, caves in which his shadow is still pointed to. — And we — we must still overcome his shadow! —Friedrich Nietzsche