The meandering of this thread is really interesting. Science wasn't discussed or mentioned before John H. introduced it after one third of the whole thread. And now the reality of paranormal phenomena is discussed. Amos, as usual, mentions Ingo Swann. Yes, he has written his account , titled appropriately The real story. I'm tired of countering all those claims and just cite a parapsychologist, Irwin (1999), An introduction to parapsychology, a man certainly with a lot of sympathies for the paranormal, who writes on p. 317 of his book: That paranormal phenomena exist is at best uncertain. A fine summary in my eyes.
(As usual, I can agree with everything Bill writes about science.)

I'd like to go far back in the discussion to the beginning and add two thoughts:

(1) ...even when I can't reduce it to an understandable and rational explanation That line from Tinker, applauded by Amos, points to one of the biggest splits between humans. When I was sitting with a friend at the West Coast of Clare watching the sunset, she was saying 'Have you seen that the last ray of sunlight looked greenish? Isn't that intriguing' I said 'Yes, I have been waiting for that effect. That is an aftereffect...'. I soon realised she had no interest in any explanation, she only had interest in unexplicable wonders. We didn't stay together. For me, a rational or scientific explanation never is a 'reduction', it is an enrichment of my perception and life. But I know others are different. I think it was Hesperis who said in one of the old threads isn't the world much nicer if there is something miraculous left? I'm convinced that there will always be something spectacularly miraculous left for us, but an explanation never takes away the fun for me, it only adds to the fun and the sense of wonder.

(2) Science for me isn't anything even remotely similar to a faith or religion. John H. seems to think that and I know some scientists think that but I consider them spectacularly wrong. It is a method which is limited to a subset of possible questions (like all methods, it has its tenets which cannot be questioned within the system, but that doesn't make it a religion for me; its tenets seems to be fine for it works so well).

Which questions? Those that are in principle decidable. Those on which you would place a bet. You would bet (if you would at all) on which team wins the next (choose your sport) world cup, you wouldn't on which team is the most lovable for you wouldn't know how to decide that. Science answers what is questions and never what should questions.

Will the world temperature rise? What effect could that have on...? Which measures can reduce an increase and which can't? These are questions for science, even if with the present knowledge there is no agreement among scientists. Is a rise in temperature good for us? What is worse, a potential breakdown of economy or a potential flooding? How far should we go to prevent even the smallest increase? These are not questions for science.

I consider many of the questions which I consider unscientific in the sense of undecidable worthwhile questions and would never stop asking them or even answering them. Questions of morale, welfare, human rights, what politics are best for... are extremely interesting questions and worth of long discussions. For those questions I use the nearest to what I have to a faith as I have stated far above. To be a scientist or not has nothing at all to do with how I respond to those unscientific questions. I do hate, however, if what I consider a scientific question (like, for instance, the age of the earth, or the position of the earth in the solar system), gets a response which is inspired by a faith.

I'm interested in a vast number of questions that are scientific and also in vast number of those that are unsicentific (you have understood by now that this is a purely descriptive term; some of the deepest questions in my life have been of this type). But there is also a third type of questions in which most of the difference between me and the majority here lies: Those questions to which the answer doesn't interest me.

These are the questions that are neither decidable nor (for me personally, but I know that there can be very different assessments of relevance) relevant for my life. What for do we exist? Is there a God? Is our whole cosmos just one 'atom' in the make-up of a immensely larger cosmos? These are some examples of such questions for me. Nothing in my life or in my decisions depends upon answers to these questions and that's why I do not ask them. As I said above, in my daily decisions and my moral pondering I am hardly different from any Christian over here. I just see no reason for me to fill unexplained or unexplainable questions with answers from a religion. Centuries ago I wouldn't have been one of those who had to explain something they couldn't understand (thunder, for instance) by an action of a God. I can live my life with many unanswered questions and still be happy.

As for questions of moral and ethics I consider the religions I know a very fine basis. Neither my wife nor I believe in any religion but still we send our daughter to religious instruction in school. We both consider religious instruction a good starting point for ethical behaviour. But when my daughter asks me about God I tell her the truth.

Wolfgang