Flutterby™! : Faith is a vice

Elf Sternberg talks about the recent Jerry Coyne / John Haught kerfluffle. If you aren't familiar with it, no worries, but one line from Elf stood out from me:

In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice.

I have been reading a bunch of transportation policy stuff. Much of it is political. Much of it is academic. Much of it is predicated on completely bogus premises. Faith, in these papers and proposals, is a virtue, and the style of writing is such that the fact that they're adopting arbitrary premises that are often complete bullshit is neatly glossed over.