The silent majority something of a mythical beast and claims to be representing such a group uuuuugh. Its sad.

Its most often used in the U.K by right wing politicians trying to inflict particular moral perspectives on society.

A more grown up debate without the standard meaningless terms, academic nonsense and backbiting may be a way forward out of this goldfishbowl into a more public debate.

So what Mooney says about the “silent majority” appears to be demonstrably false.

There are facts that are observer independent, features of reality that exist independently of us such as physical reality (Searle, 2006). And there are facts, such as social institutions, that are observer relative, i.e., that exist only because we think they exist yet they are objective facts. 20 dollar bills are just pieces of paper but in an objective sense they are 20 dollar bills because they have a collective acceptance as such. If I think a 20 dollar bill is not a 20 dollar bill I am wrong.

Religion is clearly an observer relative social institution. However, the supernatural objects and entities in religious mythology do not have an observer indepedent objective existene, and if I believe they do I am simply mistaken. The social institution of relgion has an observer relative objective existence, of course.

Science is interested in describing and explaining observer independent objectvie facts. Even those interpretations of quantum theory which question the existence of an observer indepedent reality have for the most part been discarded as implausible.

After Galileo and Kepler, natural science has met with success after success in increasing our understanding of the universe. What accounts for this astonishing success? What’s more, the pace of scientific advance is accelerating.

Religious traditions, insofar as they attempt to explain the universe, utterly fail to explain the facts of the world. Simple examples such as the geographical distribution of animals cannot be explained as originating form a single georgraphical location. The failure of theology to function as a scientific theory was widely acknowledged even before Darwin.

It is unfortunate that scientific inquiry must concern itself at all with religious traditions, except to explain the evolutionary reasons for why humans collectively accept false beliefs. The NCSE should NOT MENTION RELIGION AT ALL anywhere.

But according to Peter Hess, David Masci and Chris Mooney, science and religion can and do get along just fine and dandy; well, most of the time… sort of; excepting the extremist atheists and creationists. Using Hess’s criteria, most Americans profess a profoundly unsound theological position – as well as a profoundly unsound scientific position. So most Americans are religious extremists. Unless it’s Hess’s theology that is unsound.

Does this mean that the NCSE is endorsing a particular theology? A theology which accepts all theories which science says is supported by overwhelming evidence? If so this is very interesting but it puts the NCSE on a theological collision course with most of America, 64% of whom say that they would hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding. (See Masci.)