A few days after WOC published Donald Sensing's thoughtful discussion of science (or scientism) as religion comes this WaPo story

Think Tank Will Promote Thinking

Concerned that the voice of science and secularism is growing ever fainter in the White House, on Capitol Hill and in culture, a group of prominent scientists and advocates of strict church-state separation yesterday announced formation of a Washington think tank designed to promote "rationalism" as the basis of public policy.

The brainchild of Paul Kurtz, founder of the Center for Inquiry-Transnational, the small public policy office will lobby and sometimes litigate on behalf of science-based decision making and against religion in government affairs.

The announcement was accompanied by release of a "Declaration in Defense of Science and Secularism," which bemoans what signers say is a growing lack of understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry and the value of a rational approach to life.

"This disdain for science is aggravated by the excessive influence of religious doctrine on our public policies," the declaration says. "We cannot hope to convince those in other countries of the dangers of religious fundamentalism when religious fundamentalists influence our policies at home."

I've been worried for some time about a serious decline in math and science skills and plain old rigorous thinking in many of our high school and college graduates. But this group, a reworking of the old Council for Secular Humanism, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, seems to have an agenda that goes well beyond restoring scientific literacy in our graduates. What do you think: useful? tendentious? or irrelevant?