More Easterbrook

Many science blogs are still buzzing about Gregg Easterbrook's (yes, him again) review in Slate of Al Gore's new global warming movie "An Inconvenient Truth." Tim Lambert weighs in today. In particular this quote from Easterbrook's 2000 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, reprinted by the Discovery Institute, caught my eye:

When it comes to intellectual rigidity, there's little difference between the national academy declaring that only natural forces may be considered, and the church declaring that only divine explanations may be considered.

This simply flabbergasts me. It is so anathema to everything science is about and to everything I know and value about science that I really don't even know what to say about it. I mean, does Easterbrook even live in the same natural world that I do?