Turtles Much of the Way Down

Paul Davies has published an Op-Ed in the New York Times, about science and faith. Edge has put together a set of responses -- by Jerry Coyne, Nathan Myhrvold, Lawrence Krauss, Scott Atran, Jeremy Bernstein, and me, so that's some pretty lofty company I'm hob-nobbing with. Astonishingly, bloggers have also weighed in: among my regular reads, we find responses from Dr. Free-Ride, PZ, and The Quantum Pontiff. (Bloggers have much more colorful monikers than respectable folk.) Peter Woit blames string theory. I post about this only with some reluctance, as I fear the resulting conversation is very likely to lower the average wisdom of the human race. Davies manages to hit a number of hot buttons right up front -- claiming that both science and religion rely on faith (I don't think there is any useful definition of the word "faith" in which that is true), and mentioning in passing ...