I've always wondered: what's the turtle standing on?
Principle.
Thank God. I thought someone was going to tell me "another turtle."
And then I'd have to ask what that turtle was standing on.
The classic retort (which I think I read in one of Sagan's books) is: "Ah very perceptive. But it's turtles all the way down."
Re the larger discussion here, the debate is actually very similar to the "should we have bilingual ed classes" -- an answer really boils down to what one means by bilingual ed (or here "religion classes"). And not only could we never get any sort of agreement on that, but even if one group or another could ram through their preferred vision (mine would be something anthropologic or socio-psychological) there would never be any way to enforce this and profs (and/or colleges) would teach whatever the hell they individually wanted to.
Again, my preference would be for a "Martian anthropologist" approach.
