What is off limits for science is a massive current debate. Dawkins certainly thinks that God is not off limits and that science clearly indicates that God is a fairy tale.

Other's such as John Polkinghorne also say that God is not off limits for science and point to fine tuning etc. and make the inference that God does exist.

Having read people from both sides of the argument, my own personal opinion is that the universe leads only to agnosticism and that anyone who finds anything else has not been doing 'value-free science' - they have brought their prior assumptions to the lab.

I hope the thread doesn't stick here though.

I am interested also in

1. The belief that scientific progress will be a panacea for all human ills.

What can we reasonably expect from science?

2. Science is the only way to understand the human animal and that an evolutionary understanding of ourselves is the best way forward.

We can take it as a foregone conclusion that evolutionary theory is correct. What I am really asking is, is it entirely helpful to see all human behaviour throught he prism of evolutionary drives? Are there aspects of behaviour that have arisen without a driver simply through the complexity of our brains (emergent properties) and through our modern environment.

I obviously know that any idea of a spiritual aspect to our behaviour is clearly off limits here.

I hope I am not hijacking this thread and will happily explore further any of the issues that have been raised, they're all interesting.

Blacknad.