[chezlaw]

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Err I dont quite get where you're coming from. As I understood the original question it was regarding why is SETI deemed scientific whereas religion is deemed faith-based. My response to that was that SETI is not science (and still does receive support from public funding bodies who would otherwise spend the money on science). I didnt claim it was unimportant nor that science is all that should be funded.

By the way, the homeopathy comparison doesnt die so easily (being another example of pseudo-science). Of course scientific studies have been undertaken disproving homeopathy - being pseudo science the homeopath can follow the same path as the SETI enthusiast. "Oh we just havent found anything yet - we need more time to keep looking"

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Nothing wrong with scientific investigation into homeopathy if someone wants to fund it. However they should have scientific results that support it before they start claiming it works. The same with SETI.

It seems the only real question is should it be funded by public money. I'm not sure, it seems more like a hobbyiest thing to me but I don't know how much it costs or whether there are other tangible benefits such as improvements in technology, better data anlysis techniques, or other uses for the collected data.

chez