Lost in a Haystack

John Pieret over at Thoughts in a Haystack has weighed in on the agnostic/atheist debate with his article "Agnostic About Atheism."

You'll have to read the comments before gettng a clear idea of John Pieret's position. He says,

...But what I think Dawkins' own example (inadvertently) demonstrates is the correctness of PAP. The scientific community itself, through its practices, recognizes that miracles (assuming, as you must for the sake of this argument, that they exist) cannot truly be addressed by empiric investigation. "Miracles" may be debunked (at least by showing fraud or trickery -- merely showing a sufficient naturalistic cause for something does not mean you have shown the phenomenon is not miraculous) but they may not be empirically confirmed. That inability to truly engage the issue means that empiricism is not capable, in the end, of answering the question of whether God exists.

And since I share with Dawkins the view that empiric investigation is the only game in town for obtaining knowledge, and that the rest is mere opinion, refusing to claim knowledge of God's status is not fence-sitting, it is good scientific practice.

I've heard this before. John's opinion is that science can never absolutely disprove the existence of anything, including the most ridiculous claims of miracles and magic. Thus, according to him, you have to remain agnostic about everything if you are being a good scientist.

While philosophically sound in principle, this doesn't work in practice. Taken to the extreme it says that science can never be sure of anything because there's always the possibility that we could be wrong. I wonder if John proclaims his agnosticism about evolution and intelligent design?

I suspect not. I suspect that religion gets special treatment for some strange reason. It's okay to take a stance and say you don't believe in astrolgy but it's not okay to say you don't believe in God. Strange.