Yeez, Dave. I don't know who you think you are replying to, but it wasn't me. I would be considered by most to be an agnostic or atheist, as well as a sort of secular humanist. I don't believe in any sort of a creator. I most certainly don't think that all ideas are equal. I don't know where you got that. I do believe that there is a difference between mythos and logos. I do believe in doubting one's own beliefs a way of avoiding action without reflection and intolerance. I believe that everyone should be tolerated to the extent that they are willing to extend that same toleration to others. I believe proselytizing is deeply wrong. I believe that blind belief in anything will almost always lead to catastrophe. I believe in Santa Claus, but I don't believe he exists.

I believe you also need to try to be a little less dogmatic and angry. You got really unpleasant there in that last message, and I really don't think it was called for. You certainly didn't read much of what else I had written on the same thread.

Hypatia was the neoplatonic equivalent of a priestess. Eratosthenes flourished, and the Great Library of Alexandria was founded under absolute monarchs who proclaimed themselves to be living gods in a country where animals were considered divine. The ancient world (an interest of mine, as might be discerned from my user name) was steeped in religion to a degree almost un-imaginable today. As for the dark ages, keep in mind that they never happened in the Byzantine Empire that was more religious than the fallen West. The world is far more complex than you seem to think. Religion and inquiry are not inherently in conflict. Religion and science are not inherently in conflict (indeed, a goodly number of important scientists through the ages and still today are quite religious). Religion of any sort that brooks no dissent and permits no doubt certainly is, but not religion itself. That is what frightens me about the more militant atheists and Christians: they don't doubt much, and most certainly not their own belief that they have it all worked out.

So what do you recommend? Execution of all non-atheists, or simply forced re-education and rehabilitation? Burning of all religious texts? Your attitude as expressed on these boards has been pretty Manichean and extreme. Indeed, I can see it as being potentially just as destructive as the hard core attitudes of the religious of any stripe, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist. You may not be like that at all, and I don't mean to imply you are, but that is how you can come off in what you write.

With all due respect David Sugarman, evangelical atheists are just as annoying and unpleasant as evangelical Christians. Indeed, in some ways they are worse. By misappropriating evolutionary biology to push a religious agenda, they end up providing great ammunition to evangelical fundamentalists who can then push the idea that acceptance of evolution is acceptance of atheism. Speaking as an evolutionary biologist, that just makes my job harder when it comes to trying to get the public to accept and learn about evolution. I am not defending the fundamentalists. I think they are morally repugnant. I have been on the receiving end of their vileness (I also have a research advisory committee member who got death threats after testifying at the Dover trial). The thing is, though, that fundamentalism is not all of religion. Indeed, I would say that fundamentalists fundamentally misunderstand religion. Just because they misunderstand religion, however, that is no justification for fundamentalist atheists to misunderstand religion in turn. But I am a fuzzy-minded Unitarian, so what do I know?

I think the problem you are running into is that the typical person who tries to make the argument you are making almost inevitably follows with the illogical leap to "therefore evolution is false and you must convert to my belief system". I don't think you would have gotten the push-back you have seen had you made clear you were not of that ilk. In this area people are more likely to listen to an argument if they don't think it is coming from someone who is looking for an opportunity to ram their religious beliefs down another's throat. I don't think you are one of those unpleasant folks, though (just to make it clear).

Now that you put it like that, I think we are in agreement. I have no problem with ID having a place as a philosophy or religious belief so long as it isn't put forth as science. As for Huckabee, so long as his support for ID is not support for it being put forth as science, then you are certainly correct that it is not grounds for complaint or attack. Are you familiar with Simon Conway Morris, by the way? I think you might find his book "Life's Solution" interesting. Basically, he manages to find a way to make his religious ideas about the origin of the universe consonant with his scientific views and work by his god having created the universe with the laws of nature such as to code life of the sort we see into the system. I don't agree with him, but it is an interesting idea.