Looks like it's science-and-religion Friday:

* God tries to kill Daniel Dennett; fails.

* Frank Furedi: "The real threat to humanism today does not come from religious cranks and creationists, but from an army of secular misanthropes." If I have to choose, I'll take the misanthropes, thanks. (via A&L Daily)

* Trying to quantify religion is like trying to measure a sunbeam with a ruler. He probably should have said "..like trying to count the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin" -- but then again I've always thought that Dawkins, secular misanthrope that he is, has a point.

Yes, I think religious belief is a scientific belief, in the sense that it makes claims about the universe which are essentially scientific claims. If you believe the universe was created and inhabited by a supreme being, that would be a very different kind of universe from the sort of universe that wasn't created and does not house a creative intelligence. That is a scientific difference. Miracles. If you believe in miracles, that is clearly a scientific claim, and scientific methods would be used to evaluate any miracle that somebody claimed evidence for.

Suppose, hypothetically, that forensic archaeologists, in an unlikely series of events, gained evidence -- perhaps from some discovered DNA -- which showed that Jesus did not really have an earthly father, that he really was born of a virgin. Can you imagine any theologian taking refuge behind Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria and saying, "Nope, DNA evidence is completely irrelevant. Wrong magisterium. Science and religion have nothing to do with each other. They just peacefully coexist." Of course they wouldn't say that. If any such evidence were discovered, the DNA evidence would be trumpeted to the skies.