...and my apologies to anyone in the 120+ comments before me who remarked on this already, since I haven't had a chance to peruse them.

"Impressive scientific progress has spawned these new preachers...

The best-known men of scientific cloth are Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens...

Excuse me, Rev. Atkins, but could you please be just a bit more specific?

Weinberg, like poor Job in the Old Testament...

Giberson spends a great deal of time setting up his argument using religious language. He couches his arguments in the terminologies of faith.

Then he goes on to say:

Wilson, along with Atkins, Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others, persuades us that science has, for thinking people, discredited religion. Nevertheless, they are quick to borrow from a religion they reject and take delight in using biblical metaphors...

*cough*

Paging Black, party of two...Pot and Kettle Black, party of two. Your window table is ready.

And a sidenote to the ravingly ignorant "AnOptimist" whose ramblings totally turned me off from reading any more commentary by the 3rd letter or so: your points indicate that you do not know the first thing about evolutionary biology, so please stop. You wouldn't dare to presume to walk into a room filled with NASA scientists and start lecturing them about how the next shuttle should be launched. Why do you think you've got such a grasp of evolution, then?

Maybe...just maybe...it's because certain other people have decided that the origins of things are far more important than what's happening in the here and now, and they've set up websites, written "literature," and talk to you in churches just to set you up with straw men so they and you can feel good about yourselves and your beliefs while you flail about wildly in your clumsy attempts to knock them down.

To a few of your less-informed points:

-practically all of evolutionary biology is based on experimentation. Not all experimentation is done in labs. Quite a bit is observational, and involves fieldwork. It was not meaningless that Darwin's insights coincided with his trip to the Galapagos.

-the evolution of the bird wing is pretty well understood. Your characterization of them as spending "millions of years flopping around in the jungle" is absurd to the point of cartoonishness. Any paleontologist will concede that fossil evidence for wing formation is scanty compared to that for many other gross anatomical features in other species, but that's relatively easily explained by the delicacy of the specimens in question. Thin hollow bones just don't preserve intact as well as stegosaurus femurs.

-species change morphology ALL THE TIME. Even humans have, and it doesn't take millions of years, or populations of "quadrillions" (as if you understand that number). In the last 150 years, the average height of Americans has increased, and the average onset of puberty has moved from around 16 to 11 years of age. The causes for these things are not well-understood, but there are likely complex interactions between genetics and the environment that would make your eyes roll right up into your echoing skull.

-You are the first person I've ever seen who believes that the existence of God could be proved or disproved by travelling to the furthest "corners of the universe." Most people, even fundies, don't think that God visible, and also lurking in some far corner of another galaxy. That is as childish a belief as I've ever seen. Go read up on Teilhard de Chardin (link in my sig) and understand how to really argue this stuff (and lose with style and grace) and then come back.

-

So we here in America, the most prosperous, the most advanced, the freest, greatest potential, the most amazing collection of human beings in the history of collections of human beings, we are getting rid of our SUVs and pickup trucks, and we are in the process of downsizing to driving bubbles with wheels, lawn mowers with wheels, battery powered cars and so for forth, what are they doing in China?

What are the ChiComs doing -- while we move ourselves back to the Stone Age [emphasis mine] -- well, at least in that direction.

And there you have it. Electric cars, hybrids, and plug-ins are not actually technological progress at all. They're actually just glorified lawnmowers, and by adopting them, we're moving into the Stone Age. Not the Oil Age. Not the Bronze, or even Iron Age. Nope. Stone Age.

Yep. Those "ChiComs" sure are an enviable lot, huh? Kind of makes you question the whole "Com" part of that vaguely insulting label, doesn't it?

No? It doesn't?

..Oh yeah.