If somebody wants to put a sticker on my new book, saying it presents a theory, not a fact, I would happily concur. Caution, it should say. Assuming these propositions are true without further research could lead to calamitous results. But I would insist that we also put the stickers on any books or articles that maintain or presuppose that religion is the lifeboat of the world, which we dare not upset. I argue that the proposition that God exists is not even a theory. That assertion is so prodigiously ambiguous that it expresses, at best, an unorganised set of dozens or hundreds - or billions - of quite different possible theories, most of them disqualified as theories in any case, because they are systematically immune to confirmation or disconfirmation.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 2:51 PM  |