Just another comment, and then I'll leave, promise...

The scientific method is so elegantly obvious in its logicality and application that any reasonably intelligent child should be able to grasp it.

Comments about the Scientific Method are thrown around a lot in these discussions. And maybe I'm totally missing the point, but this happens to be something I have personal knowledge and experience with. I spent many, many years not fully understanding the Scientific Method. With lots of science training, I always just muttered, "yeah, yeah, I've heard that before." Not until I truly experienced it in a chemical research lab and made it a part of me, "owned it," (the aha experience) did I truly understand it. (Bill, isn't there a word for that in philosophy...perhaps existentialism or something.) Anyway, I think "The Scientific Method" is used too lightly in philosophical discussions, usually by talkers who really don't understand it as scientists do. I'm not sure if it even has the same meaning in a philosophical discussion as in a scientific discussion.