Where does Andrew Baker stand on anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? Given his teaching post and the alarmist dogma that is taught at educational institutions, one suspects that he believes in AGW. If he has any irrefutable scientific evidence to substantiate AGW, let him share it with us. No one else has been able to do so, as yet.

E.Sykes,
Unfortunately you post contains so many logical inconsistencies that it is obviously pointless...

You claim there is no truth (a truth claim itself, so obviously irrational and wrong), and then proceed to make a series of truth claims about religion, freedom and dogma.

Now if that is how you plan to 'educate' your children, well, the poor kids are in for a pretty crippling time...

Andrew,

The issue is not whether different voices or opinions are heard it is a question of "time management". Of course we want to hear what others have to say about the important (and unimportant) questions but I do not have the time to consider them all equally. We have to make choices and decisions on which views and ideas to listen to because there is not enough time.

Equally we have to make choices and decisions for our children. For example, meteorology has proven to be good at short term weather predictions and better than predicting weather by reading tea leaves. We should teach the ideas that have proven to be the most useful while still allowing some time to consider a smattering of other less proven ideas to leaven the mix.

The danger comes from trying to give everything - regardless of our experience - equal time.

If Feyeraband and Baker can't tell the difference between religion and science they simply reveal their ignorance of science. It's true, as Thomas Kuhn and others have noted, that there are irrational components in scientific thinking (especially the creative process of conceiving a hypothesis), and it's true that scientists are fallible human beings who slip into irrational judgements easily enough. Nevertheless science does refer to observations of the world to verify its theories, and competition among scientists tends to ensure that poorly justified theories are displaced, sooner or later.

Over the long haul these attributes have led to huge changes of scientific views, and of society's views. It has led to a rich and deep understanding of how the world works. This understanding complements ancient wisdom, and it displaces many superstitions.

On the other hand organised religions tend to have a core of old wisdom with a large encrustation of superstitions. They perpetuate both indiscriminately and have not noticably changed, nor noticably advanced their (compromised) contribution to society over the past couple of centuries.

While many scientific advances have occurred through challenging accepted scientific interpretations of information, the extreme of accepting all belief systems as valid is ludicrous.

The search for truth is not achieved by abandoning reason.

Did I read that right...Astrology is just as valuable as science? What about diving the future from animal entrails, Hey you could combine it with dissection in biology class. The fact that the Author took anything written by Feyerabend with anything more then a grain of salt says a lot.

Give me the scientific method any day, that mode of thinking has proven it's self to be infinitely better at producing real results then any other.