There is a struggle over theology. You do not have to be a "Bible Believing Christian" to fall for the Intelligent Design argument. You do not have to be a humanist to accept and live in a context of a slow deliberate evolution to our existence followed by the inevitable extinction of our race.

What we are marching toward and what is really inflaming this debate is the inevitable realization that our intelligence is not that special - we will create before to long intelligence that is more creative and intelligent than us and this is what will really create resentment against science and profound self worth problems for a lot of Nobel laureates.

Rather than look at the harm that religious fundamentalists will do lets look at what science that accepts our intelligence as a god to be obeyed will do for us. Better access to porn, really nice anti-wrinkle creams, alternate realities, medicine by statistic, dehumanization, genocide.

Killing off all the priests and imams has been tried before it did not work that well, however we do have a nice record of a whole scientific liberal open culture killed off and shackled by fundamentalism.

A History of God

The Battle for God

________
^{My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
  To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
  Pro patria mori. --Owen}

Basically, I get the notion that what you are propagating is not freedom but rather the pseudo-religion of science. Attacking this pseudo-religion (you don't call it that way, but I do) is the attack on western life-style, as I understand your argument.

But, I must digress here. Attacking western life-style isn't about an attack by religion and fundamentalism (science is fundamentalist as are most religions, it builds a rather strict fundament on which you base your view of the world), but rather about the current attacks on personal freedom.

There are many parties who do this, including the religious fundamentalist and scientists, but if we are to remain a "western society" (whatever that term might mean to you, I'm heavily influenced by 80's Germany), we have to make sure that what we try to keep up is the will to respect the freedom of thought of everybody around us.

There's a famous german saying, which roughly goes:

"Freedom is the different person's freedom."

And that's what we should keep up.

ID (your example) is debatable, it's something that I did debate in school (in philosophy), and that I don't consider something I can accept for myself.

You wouldn't happen to be a "Scientific Fundamentalist" would you?

now that you've identified the problem (took you awhile), you need an effective weapon against fundamentalism

so out with it brainiacs, the clock is ticking: how do you defeat sunni wahabbists and southern baptists?

i mean REALLY defeat them

small hint: standing there and lecturing them drily on brainiac level bullshit about memes and historical momentum and the supposed inevitability of how everything in the world will work out the way you see it does not count as defeating them

do you have a backbone?

i mean really: do all of you much self-esteemed humanists have enough backbone to actually fight that which would destroy you?

or does getting dirty destroy your much vaunted principles?

such that you would rather the world enter a new era of stagnation and backwardness to rival the middle ages in europe for centuries?

not getting your hands dirty is preferable to fucking FIGHTING these assholes as they chip away at liberal government in the usa and suicide bomb thousands in the middle east?

humanists sitting around, discussing their impending doom, and none of you fuckers actually DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT

fucking pathetic

the fundamentalists win if they are the only ones to get down and dirty

why will humanists lose?

BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN A FUCKING IVORY TOWER, LOOKING DOWN ON POOR SUFFERING HUMANITY AND DO NOTHING BUT DRAW PRONOUNCEMENTS FROM THEIR SAFE RICH WESTERN HIGH AND MIGHTY COCCOON

heaven forbid any of you fuckers actually go down in the mud and HELP humanity actually progress

i mean REALLY help: FUCKING KILL THE FUNDAMENTALIST ASSHOLES

just KILL THEM

no, that's inconfuckingcievable, that would mean you were as HUMAN as the rest

so you sit in your ivory tower, and you bemoan the coming new middle ages

not like you are doing anything about it

you humanists get what you deserve: you're so shocked and outraged at the essential ugliness of the human condition, that it isn't the rise of fundamentalism that REALLY bothers you, it is the fact that humanity itself struggles with what you have arrived at with such ease in your smug little hermetically sealed antiseptic western coccoon of money

you get what you deserve, useless rich western chattering classes

you get what you deserve

the fundamentalists SPEAK to the masses of what they want and need, they speak to their ugly side, and the masses listen

meanwhile, you lecture them of the need to preserve YOUR status quo

you're so fucking doomed

you fucking rich western assholes who won't FIGHT THE GREATEST EVIL IN THE WORLD TODAY: fundamentalism

you know it, but you are helpless to do anything about it, because of your own shortcomings at understanding the truly ugly side of human nature

you are helpless because you recognize the enemy, but you are unwilling to meet the enemy

you're fucking doomed unless you WAKE THE FUCK UP

assholes bomb the fucking underground in london AND YOU FUCKING FRET ABOUT THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF DENYING THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT PROPAGATE THE EVIL THAT MADE YOUNG MEN BOMB

asshoels fly airplanes into office towers in new york AND YOU FUCKING FRET ABOUT THE DUE PROCESS OF MOSTLY TERRORIST ASSHOLES IN GUANTANAMO

you're so fucking USELESS

you don't understand your relationship with money

money allows you to think and act the way you do

but the way you think and act DOES NOT SPREAD THE WEALTH TO THOSE WHO ARE NOT RICH

meanwhile, fundamentalists pursue agendas which keep the poor in poverty on one hand, and with the other hand, tell the poor their way is the way to salvation

it's self-propagating

for you, to make more people rich, and therefore to make them think the same wonderfully disconnected from reality daydreams of how the world should function that you think, you need to SPREAD THE WEALTH

but how do you spread the wealth when fundamentalists work to entrench poverty?

YOU FUCKING FIGHT THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

YOU JAIL THEM, YOU KILL THEM, YOU SHUT DOWN THEIR ORGANIZATIONS

YOU DEVELOP SOME FUCKING TEETH

and THEN you can spread the wealth, but you cannot spread the wealth if you will not recognize that all of your efforts are being SQUANDERED BY A COMPETING AGENDA FOR THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE POOR PASSES

and in todays world, THEY ARE WINNING

you develop some fucking understanding of how the ugliness of human nature REALLY WORKS

you don't stand on YOUR humanist pulpit and deliver self-ennobling lectures about how it SHOULD work based on your idealistic dreams, and then hold out against anyone who would actually FIGHT fudnamentalists!

you don't fucking lecture the world about how your hermitically sealed climate controlled rich western coccoon is so high and mighty and superior and how the world should work, and then stand against those who work to maintain your coccoon!

YOU DON'T FUCKING AFFORD HUMANIST PROTECTIONS TO ENEMIES OF HUMANISM!!!

DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND YOU RICH SHELTERED WESTERN CHILDREN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND!!!!!!!!!!!!

human nature is UGLY

progress is not an easy waltz, it is a desperate messy hardcore struggle, two steps forward, one step back

you have to get DIRTY, you have to FIGHT an enemy YOU have already identified!

or in your pigheaded stubborn refusal to replace idealism with an acceptance of reality, you would rather see a coming dark age of anti-science and poverty and fundamentalist atrocities and lack of human rights

the ancient greeks of science and reason went the way of the dodo, the arab world of science and reason in the middle ages went the way of the great auk, and now it is YOUR turn to fade into history... BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT FIGHT!!!!!!!!!

simply because, in your safe bubble wrapped rich western coccoon, you will not take what your brain perceives: fundamentalism is your enemy, and take that to your hand, and actually FIGHT THEM, KILL THEM, JAIL THEM, DESTROY THEM

if you don't fight them, your extinction is what you deserve

FUCKING

PATHETIC

WESTERN

CHILDREN

WAKE

THE

FUCK

UP

here come the new dark ages, and all of you standing around delivering useless platitudes about how the world SHOULD work rather than how it DOES work are complicit in the defeat of this age of science and reason

"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office"

• You seem to be saying that all devout Christians and Muslims favor war. Please see my kuro5hin story Chuck Baldwin, prominent Baptist pastor: "The Religious Right Scares Me".
• You seem to be saying that fundamentalism (Christian and Islam) is using the Intelligent Design debate as a wedge to wage war. Please see my kuro5hin comment Separation of school and state for my proposal to end the Intelligent Design debate. If you consider the abolition of public schools (and the corresponding abolition of $400/month per household tax to pay for them) to threaten "the very basis of modern civilization", then so be it. But educational policy has nothing to do with war policy, except to the extent, as I wrote in another kuro5hin comment that the public education system created dimwits who supported the war.

I see at least six populations coming out of your article: peaceful Christians, Christian warmongers, peaceful Muslims, Muslim warmongers, peaceful secular humanists, and secular humanist warmongers.

Christian fundamentalism is not currently imbued with a neo-Imperialist philosophy, although it is more interventionist than the European Left. Islamism is imbued with a neo-imperialistic philosophy. This difference is very important.

The importance of Islamic Terrorism is based on the possibility of nuclear terrorism down the road. For example, Iran is working on nukes and also supports Hizbullah and Hamas. Both Hizbullah and Hamas are responding to the pressure on Iran to stop building nukes by becoming tamer and more electoral in their policies. Is this just a ruse while waiting to get nukes from Iran?

Paranoid version: the earthquake in Pakistan was a result of an al-Queda nuclear test: Well, not yet, anyway. Hey, where is Osama -- under the rubble?

The ID (anti-evolution) movement is self-consciously a movement to encourage conversion. They don't really believe that ID is science. This stunning cynicism is justified in Christian scripture undoubtedly by St. Paul, who said that when he preached the Jews he came as a Jew, when he preached to the Syrians he came as a Syrian (or was that a Roman?) and so on. After all, if you create generations of followers does it really matter how sincere the initial conversion was?

Extremely refreshing
I don't care how refreshing it is. The question is, is it accurate? I think the phenomenon of the resurgence of religiousity is a question that needs to be answered. The original article doesn't do any better than the Biblical prophecy of the war between Gog and Magog, however.

Materialistic philosophy is seen to be failing the task of social control, and the super-freedom that is seen as leading to AIDS and drug addiction is seen as a symptom of godlessness. Can you top that as an explanation?

The Christian Fundamentalists are trying to exploit the war against Islamism as a selling point for their religion -- can you blame them?

There is no threat beyond what press and politicians deem fit to create themselves for their own purposes.

"Our way of life is under attack, but not just by terrorists."

I do not fear science. It does not threaten my life or belief system.

However, I will argue against 'scientists' who evangelize faith in unproven theories that become a philosophy or a type of religion. Once you can show me how life can come from non-life and how one species mutates into another self-sustaining higher order species, then your evolutionary theory is science. Until then, let us just teach that mutations occur as they are observed.

In other words, if Evolutionists don't teach that men evolved from apes, then Creationists won't be in such a frenzy to insert the Intelligent Designer.

And, just because we have the technology to 'do something' does not mean we will use the proper wisdom in its use. Beware forgetting the sanctity of life.

It is sad how all sides in these culture wars are given to such polarizing propaganda.  This particular piece is as paranoid and ridiculus as the most backword of snake-handling xian sermons.

Please get a grip.