Re: Intelligent Design

There's a reason why religion and science should be separate. Completely separate.
The reason is thus:

So we can learn things.

One of religion's historical functions is to explain what people don't understand. Does it use the scientific method to do that? Absolutely not. Look at the following religious explanations.

"The world is the shell of a giant turtle." (central asian myth)
"God created humans out of clay." (jewish/christian myth)
"Crows are black and have "hoarse voices" because the Great Spirit cursed them." (native american myth)

These were all statements made by popular religions, about the natural world. They were not formulated using any science. They were instead MADE UP. They are also obviously false. How do we know they are false?

-We used SCIENCE to find that the earth is a planet made of rocky material, and not the shell of a giant turtle.
-We used SCIENCE to find that humans are made mostly out of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, and iron, which in turn compose bone, muscle, organs, and skin.
-We used SCIENCE to find that crows are black and sound the way they do in order to (1) better hide from predators and (2) easily communicate with each other. (see wikipedia article)

Religion is MADE UP. Some religions happen to have good moral teachings, but because religion isn't based on anything real, it should never be the final authority in questions of science.

Maybe "God" did create the universe. Maybe the cosmic snake mated with the cosmic turtle and produced the world-egg! Hey, it could be true. I can imagine it. Science might even prove it right! But why don't we give credit to these things? Because people came up with the idea creatively. They didn't use the scientific method. They didn't use reason. They didn't use evidence. They didn't use logic.

Same with "ID".