Todd popped a zit over at Mr. Pterodactyl's, apparently without the assistance of a licensed dermatologist. If that nuclear whitehead was anything like some of mine, the mirror, sink, and walls have just experienced the horrors of perhaps the most fearsome of WMD's, the Intercontinental Pus Missile. Oh, the humanity! Is Iowa still there? Perhaps, with the development of his next subterranean missile silo, he could target Iran or North Korea. (I still pustulate that merely the threat of some of my zits pointed eastward caused the Soviet Union to collapse. Reagan's SDI really stood for Steve's Dermatological Interdiction.)

If my understanding of his post is correct, he feels that the insoluble nature of opposing metaphysical viewpoints makes it of little value in a cultural debate concerning ethics or law. To me, this necessarily means that one viewpoint, with its incumbent baggage, is anointed to ascendancy at the expense of any others. What power has the authority to choose? It is popular in our generation to ascribe 'the separation of church and state' clause ruled by the Supreme Court to be 'contained' in the Constitutional 1st Amendment as the metaphysical headlock of choice. A collateral result, however, has been the destruction of the levee system that was solidly built by the Constitution's framers, leaving the states, the people, and the executive and legislative branches increasingly overwhelmed in the swirling floodwaters of ever rising statist court oversight. (We should never shake this image: The mustachioed Ruth Buzzi Ginzberg, dominatrix, adorned with whip and tight black leather... It is not a pretty sight.) The baggage, when opened, was found to be manufactured by the Pandora Corporation.

Yes, continuing the metaphysical debate is important, even in science. I can agree that science itself is neutral concerning metaphysics. It is limited in its scope. Science may be neutral, but scientists aren't. I might even argue that politics is neutral...