Intelligent design / Stupid design

It seems to me that a main difference between real scientists and these intelligent design people is this. True scientists say 'It's a big and mysterious universe, and the things we think we know could be wrong.' Theologians, on the other hand, say 'It's a big and mysterious universe, and the things we keep saying might turn out to be true.'

Religion is like selling real estate you don't get to see until you die. Are you buying this?
Mark Twain had it when he said 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so.'

It occurs to me that modern religion (in the West) appears so absurd because it's only half there. The other half of fully operational religion is the torture chambers. The 'theology' only makes sense when it works fist-in-glove with a system of repression, spies, and torture. Without torture, who would believe this stuff? But when understood as the stuff you are _required_ to believe under penalty of real torture, then its very implausability becomes an additional torture, an additional twist of the knife, as it were, to really screw up any kind of rational thought.

Maybe all the followers of the Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts, meeting on a battlefield and all slaughtering one another in one final Wargasm of religious piety is not such a bad idea.

Maybe Evil really does undo itself, eventually. That would be a fun thing to believe, whether it's true or not.

Don't think these thoughts.
Shhhhhh.