<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/5f16e012-b240-4e81-8366-4ce5a22079c2/2B383B54-0562-4E6C-87CB-417292C9FA64/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-paul-c-davies/" href="http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-paul-c-davies/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.samharris.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-paul-c-davies/"><DIV id="leftcol"> <H2 class="title">Response to Paul C. Davies</H2> <P>I have long thought that someone should perpetrate a <A target="_blank" title="Sokal-style hoax" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair">Sokal-style hoax</A> on the New York Times opinion page—a page which has become, under the careful stewardship of David Shipley, a stronghold of pseudoscience, preening relativism, and religious apology. Paul C. Davies’ recent <A target="_blank" title="op-ed" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?ref=opinion">op-ed</A>, “Taking Science on Faith,” would have been a magnificent hoax text, and I am genuinely ashamed that I wasn’t clever enough to write it myself. By equivocating on the meaning of the term “faith,” Davies manages to obliterate every useful distinction between scientific empiricism and intellectual honesty on the one hand and religious superstition and self-deception on the other. Regrettably, I do not think Davies intended his essay to be a hoax, and the New York Times seems unlikely to learn that is has pandered, yet again, to the least discerning of its readers with another piece of rank obscurantism. </p> <P><A title="back" href="javascript:alert('This link contains javascript. Please visit the clip source to follow this link.');" target="_self">« Back</A></p> <BR clear="all" /> </DIV></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/2B383B54-0562-4E6C-87CB-417292C9FA64/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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