g- when I use the word material I mean composed of matter. When I say matter I mean something that has mass and exists as a solid, liquid, or gas. When I say mechanical I mean explainable by causally determined material forces. As Feynman pointed out," No one has found any machinery behind the law," refering to modern physics. I'm sorry, the true believer comment was in response to the comment made by Eliezer about religion. I don't know that it applies to Elizner himself--I don't know him at all. The grounds I have for saying that science does not demand "material explainations" is the fact that the most experimentally tested, validated scientific theory we have does not posit them. I didn't mean to attack Eliezer, but just the idea that there must be that type of explaination in order to be scientific. I think I was applying the post with the earlier comments, and I would do so from respect of the basic material covered. I would agree with you whole-heartedly that abandoning the search for explainations would be a huge mistake. I'm suggesting that by removing the unneeded assumption that all explainations are of a certain form science can advance in new ways. As David Bohm once said, "Progress in science is usually made by dropping assumptions."