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If Anonymous (posted at 17:00) is correct in his statement of Dawkins' position (and I am not certain that he is -- I think he is trying to make Dawkins sound more acceptable than Dawkins' own diatribes suggest that he really is), the problem is that Dawkins sets up a false dichotomy between science and religion. While it may be true that some religions are not based on rationality, not all are rationality-free. As a Christian, I am pleased to say that Christian teachings is based on a long line of rational thinkers dating back to St. Paul in the First Century A.D. (Romans being a work of tremendous rationality). St. Thomas Aquinas may have been the greatest philosopher over the past 2000 years.

Science does have a different approach, but not really. It does accept certain models and theories as the "generally accepted" views, and does not lightly accept challenges to these viewpoints changing only ponderously over several years. In that way, it is very much like Christianity which also accepts certain viewpoints as being the "orthodox" or "Christian" positions and changes them only very slowly over several years. But make no mistake -- Christianity does change over time as it reassesses what it knows and understands both from the texts of the Bible and from God's general revelation as discovered through science.

In fact, the only real difference between them is the fact that Christianity believes that some knowledge is the result of a pre-existent God who has revealed them to us. Scientists, meanwhile -- when acting as scientists and not mouthpieces for neo-atheists dogma like Dawkins does -- take no position on the issue of whether God exists or not, but try to limit their claims of knowledge to what is testable using the scientific method.

BK