Intelligent Design Hooey

I respect religions, I really do. I respect just about all of them, except the ones that get cultish or behave like pre-schoolers without manners.

The list that gets no respect:
Scientology.
This is a fine example of a business convention "get in touch with _you_" weekend that got out of control and developed into a religion. It is sad, and feeds on the stupid who want to be smart, but are not. Sorry Tom, I can't imagine how anyone could be this gullible.

Heaven's Gate.
Actually, though nutty, not really evil, just ill informed. Spooky in its "this could be your D&D addicted friend" nature.

Intelligent Design
Christianity, when it interferes with science, is a dangerous thing. This is the real evil, no doubtie about it. I keep stumbling across speudo-science fecal matter masquerading as "proof of something" and I'm getting fed up. I know science. I've done science. This my friends, is not science.

These people are bent on filling the world with misinformation. Lemme tell you a little story...

I had a friend, a female friend to be exact. She was a happy Christian and that was fine. I, a very friendly athiest, got along well with her for a time. Things were grand. Then one day, we got to chatting about the history of the world.

She said that the world was just over 2000 years old. I probably gave her an "um, no.... more like several billion years". She contested, and asked how I knew that (in a pointed way). I answered, "well, if you go by just carbon dating the fossils we find of hominids are older than 20,000 years." She then said "but carbon dating is inaccurate. A bunch of Christian researchers [ed note, oxymoron] took the bones of a recently deceased seal to see how old it was according to a lab analysis and they said it was several hundred years old. So if a one day old seal bone checks out to be several hundred years old then the age of that human-like fossil they found was only over several hundred years. I protested, and explained that carbon dating is not designed for accuracies like that, and that it's really only useful for dating about 1000 years to 50,000 years. But she would have none of it. There was no point to arguing, because neither of us could change the others' mind.

I have to go, I may add to this.