I never argue religion with people. It is pointless. You either believe or you don’t and if you do believe, nothing can or will change your mind. And if your religious conviction spills over to your politics, “God does not want us to raise taxes” then political debate and discussion become pointless also. Such is the republican party today. It is the same problem dealing with theocratical governments like Iran. Arguing the separation of church and state to people in those theocratic systems is as foreign to them as a democratic system without the right to vote is to us. It should frighten every American that republicans are quickly moving towards a theocratic stance on governing. It means we will continue to deal with the intransigence seen today on the debt ceiling issue. Republicans have been given a mission from god so to compromise would be to go against god’s will and as long as republicans are doing his will, god will protect us which means they can ignore economists, business leaders and other real smart people when they say you don’t raise the debt ceiling and it will be disastrous. Republicans just say, “No, the lord will provide.” Then a month from now when the stock market has crashed, the credit rating is tanked and the economy is in a tail spin, they will start scrambling like the guy that was predicting the end of the world for sometime last June for an excuse. Maybe then it will be because of planned parenthood or there are too many gay people or woman should have more children. Religion is fine when you pray in your closet but when you use it as an excuse for political policy and you hurt me and my fellow Americans you are no different than the religious zealots that rule Iran.

Mr Luskin is either disingeuous about his pushing of ID or his abilities as a scientist. Of course the field of of evolutionary biology has controversies. All actively growing scientific disciplines have controversies. As new data is discovered or old data reinterpreted old ideas are questioned or new ones rejected. It's the "scientific method". There are questions over how gravity works, yet we stay stuck to the earth.

Mr. Luskin states the tree of life is falling apart. It is just being rearranged as genetic research needs to be reconciled with the old phylogenetic model. His attempts to claim that there are major flaws in the broad evoltionary theory. The flaw is instead his understanding of science.

Interesting discussion. I'd like to make something clear that I always hear when this discussion comes up. According to every poll over the last 100 years the majority of scientists DO believe in God and always have except for a two year period in the 90's. The argument that all scientists are atheists is false.

According to the latest findings in Quantum Theory and various high level physics/sciences, arguments for a higher intelligence, metaphysics, alternate universes and things just a few years ago almost every non-scientist (even some scientists) would call both magic and nonsense are being openly embraced due to verifiable facts and theories.

That being said, these things are HIGHER SCIENCES. Children need to understand the basics first. Creationism is simply a story. We have a separation of church and state for a reason: to prevent a Theocracy and ensure that all men are treated equally. We have a separation of stories and fact when addressing science so that our children grow up understanding the difference between fact and fantasy. Creationism can be taught in Literature or Theocracy classes but it has no place in a Science class.

It makes me crazy when Thom goes after atheists. He argued Thursday that "there is no empirical evidence for either religion or atheism." Talk about a false equivalence! Atheists have on their side the carefully accumulated and continually refined scientific explanations of life, the world, the universe. Religionists have 'faith' in one fantasy or another, with absolutely no credible evidence. As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Atheists say, "We'll go with the sum knowledge accumulated by all the scientists over time, as opposed to one 'faith' or another." WHY does Thom persist in treating this with the kind of false equivalence that drives us all crazy for everything else, like climate change deniers etc?