A rather colourful post on the canonisation of Mary McKillop by @ruzkin (followed by a slightly longer explanation of his position) got me thinking. (First, go read those posts; I can’t say I disagree with a word he’s written, but you might want to. Go on. I dare you.)

I often hear the faithful claim that ‘your belief in science is just faith of another stripe’. I finally found a way to express why that isn’t so:

The scientific method exposes itself to scientific analysis. You can form a hypothesis (that the scientific method works, or does not) and given adequate controls and data (i.e. meta-research), prove or disprove the utility of the scientific method. Science is self-referentially provable or disprovable, by definition.

Of course, the faithful will still refute the validity of science. “God is just not scientifically explainable” is an easy cop-out. It’s still ignorant as hell and morally corrupt, however. If you truly believe God exists, pony up and prove it in a testable and repeatable manner.