Hostility toward spiritual traditions may be hampering empirical inquiry
That smells of equivocation. There is science, the methodology, and there is the body of knowledge constructed using that methodology, colloquially also often just called &#x27;science&#x27;.<p>Yes, obviously one can use scientific methodology to study religion, and given that religiosity is a very common human behavior, it is hardly surprising that you can learn something about human psychology this way, thus contributing to the scientific body of knowledge.<p>But that does not in any way suggest that the methodology (that is, the epistemological practice of science) has anything to learn from religion, which is obviously the claim that Dawkins and Pinker are rejecting, because that is the claim that religions make when they make assertions about how the world works, as all religions do.<p>So, the article at best substantiates the obvious and completely uncontroversial interpretation of the title that you can make empirical observations of religious behaviour, while failing to provide any arguments in favor of the interpretation that at least some people will be prone to read into the title, that religion somehow has to offer any useful methods for distintuishing fact from fiction that should be adopted by science.