A religion! Yes. Over at Mike's post on religion (see below) a certain Renaissance Nerd opines that evolutionary "theory" has become a religion. He proceeds to assert:

It fits the definitions from the dictionary I've stolen from above:

1. Beliefs and worship: people's beliefs and opinions concerning the existence, nature and worship of a deity or deities, and divine involvement in the universe and human life. 2. Relig: A particular institutionalized or personal system of beliefs and practices relating to the divine. 3. Personal beliefs or values: a set of strongly-held beliefs, values and atittudes that somebody lives by.

Went over to his blog, and saw this post where he goes on about how outmoded evolution is. The only good thing about the post is that he alerted me to the fact that WorldNet Daily was giving away a book titled 'The Case Against Darwin'. And the anti-evolution movement is supposed to be marginal??? And today I get a "google alert" that gives me a link to an anti-evolution opinion piece that starts out "How many know that the theory of evolution is more religion than science?". I might be skeptical of "memeplexes," but hell, this evolution ~ religion meme is spreading. These wise men need to tell the Pope that evolution is a religion! One can't have the spiritual leader of 1 billion Christians entertaining the possibility that this non-Christian religion is actually a worthwhile scientific hypothesis! In the recent book Science and Religion Richard Dawkins stated that he preferred the unalloyed anti-evolutionism of Christian fundamentalists to the more moderate theistic evolutionary consensus (though it is not a doctrine) of the Catholic hierarchy, but that's easy for him to say, since he lives in Merry Ole England where there aren't many 6-day literalists running about!

The kind of stuff above is why the the guys at The Panda's Thumb can be a bit undiplomatic when they deal with it every day....