A model of rational critique?

 Jonah Goldberg posts the “appalled” Ed Feser on secular conservatives.  Apparently Mr. Feser thinks of himself as the opposite of “smugly unreflective and dogmatic.”  Readers can decide for themselves. 

 I will respond to just one of Mr. Feser’s un-smug, non-dogmatic statements: that only someone blithely ignorant of religion would call it “unscientific.”  

I wonder to which science Mr. Feser is referring.  There was the Templeton prayer experiment, and that didn’t work out too satisfactorily, did it?  Granted, the research design was laughable, in a charming sort of way (the people praying for the recovery of cardiac patients, for example, were only given the patient’s first name and last initial, on the assumption presumably that God would know to which Jim G. they were referring).  Perhaps Mr. Feser could propose a more scientifically rigorous design to show the efficacy of petitionary prayer or any other religious practice of his choosing. 

The curious thing to me is why the idea of secular conservatism is so “appalling” to Mr. Feser and others.  We are only proposing that the basis of conservatism  can be broadened beyond revelation to rest on an understanding of human nature itself.  Reason and the evidence of history show the crucial importance of parental responsibility, self-discipline, limited government, and free economic exchange in creating a society in which individuals can most thrive.  Do religious conservatives believe that only religious belief grounds conservatism?  That position strikes me as rather an admission of defeat.

Secular conservatives applaud the virtues put forth in various Holy Books, we simply claim them—proudly–as the creation of human beings, to which all have access.