When theologians argue, they try to resolve differences by turning to murky sources remote from anything fundamental: they open their holy texts, they cite fellow theologians, they try to reinterpret words that have been reinterpreted many times before. Have you ever heard scientists argue, though? They do all the time. But they don’t resolve issues by appealing to higher authorities: they don’t usually argue that because Richard Dawkins said it, it’s settled. They don’t argue that we have to parse Charles Darwin’s words a little more finely to arrive at the truth.

No, they say, “I’m going into the lab and do an experiment to test that proposition.”

They say, “I’m going to build a new instrument to measure that and see who’s right.” Our only authority is reality, and that’s what we test all of our inferences against. When you’re studying the world, your source of information is the world.

I’ll have more respect for theologians, whose object of study is god, when they actually start querying their subject directly. OK, they can start small and begin by pinning down ghosts or angels and asking them the tough questions that will eventually lead to collaring the deity, but you know, it’s just absurd that people who make so many assertions about the supernatural never seem to actually study supernatural sources of information.

It’s almost as if they don’t exist.