We can rule you just fine as long as your head's in the sand...

Now that the Catholic Church has come out against evolution, Frisco Jon has a few words on the subject of "faith".

You'd think, what with the whole sun-going-around-the-Earth thing, the church might be content to leave the details to the experts. But the idea of experts is outmoded. The scientific method is outdated. The new paradigm: Start from the conclusions and work backward. This is the age of faith or, as we called it last time, the Dark Ages (my emphasis).

Like many people, I am astonished by how the Bush administration can get away with this much incompetence for this long. I am surprised that it can continue to be callously indifferent to the needless deaths of soldiers and civilians in Iraq. I am surprised that it can blow the cover of a CIA secret operative and escape the consequences. I have this eerie alternative-universe feeling. I hear the "Twilight Zone" music. Didn't actions used to have consequences? When lies were exposed, didn't something happen?

Not in a little year we like to call -- 721.

Let's look at the upside for a minute. There will be plenty of cool new illuminated manuscripts; there will be exciting advances in distilled beverages; we will all get to own our own sheep. Plus, if there's a crusade, we'll be able to travel to foreign lands. The motto du jour: Our crazy people can beat their crazy people. We have faith.

I really don't care what god or gods people worship. It's the realm of the mysterious and the supernatural; go nuts. The list of great thinkers who were also great believers is long; there is nothing incompatible between the two. That is, until someone announces that all truths are known and all behaviors are judged and you are going to Paradise and you aren't.

Once upon a time, there were two American institutions I believed in: the Supreme Court and the voting process. Now I have serious questions about both because people of faith seem to be taking them over. Faith-based elections: First the results, then the counting. Faith-based judicial decisions: First the verdict, then the facts.

There seems to be a lovely little tea party going on down the block. There's a guy in a big hat, and a rabbit, and please, pay no attention to what the dormouse says. We have enough hallucinations already.

Gee, maybe if we have to re-invent the wheel, it'll have a more efficient shape this time.