In this Times op-ed, Paul Davies condemns faith by faint praise.  Of course, he starts out with this line, which is no kind of praise: “In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.”  Not really, Paul.  I might ammend the last half of that line this way: …in religion, having (true) belief without (empirical) evidence (only) is regarded as possible.

It gets better.

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I didn’t realize I lived so close to Mecca, but National Public Radio featured the religious pilgrimage of shoppers to the Willow Grove Mall up the road from me, in its obligatory lament of the state of American materialism and over-consumption. They spoke of queues lined up hours before the opening of the emporium’s hot retail fashion house H&M, which touts the best of both worlds — high-end clothing for low-end budget customers. This is what we like to do in early Christmas season: wring our hands about the doubling of the U.S. consumption in the last twenty years (NPR statistic) — and then go out and shop till we drop.

What in the world can we possibly still need, as last year’s presents molder in our basements? I learned the answer to that yesterday at a party pushing products for the kitchen. We need a metal “pie crust shield” (I am in the dark ages with my bits of aluminum foil); we need a “gravy separator” (I’ve just always waited for nature to divide fat from juice.); we need contraptions to pull tabs on cans and to separate egg yolks from whites (What are fingers for?). I settled on the “ice cream sandwich maker,” basically a plastic cylinder with a plastic lid to press into it. At $16, it was the cheapest I could do and make good my escape.