Religious folks who believe in evolution and why I think they're basically . . . silly

Now and again, I'll get someone who says to me something along the lines of, "Not all religious people are like those crazy people who want to throw evolution out of schools. We are the intelligent, reasonable religious people and nothing like those other people." Then they almost always go on to say that since there are some religious people who believe in evolution it is unfair and/or illogical for atheists to say religion is ridiculous.

A freely concede that some religious people believe in evolution, but the rest . . . doesn't follow. The reason why atheists - or at least this atheist - oppose religion and think it's goofy isn't because some religious people are intellectually dishonest about evolution. It's annoying when they are, and not just because they're religious but because they all too often outright lie and manipulate in order to justify their absurd beliefs. But, really, in any big movement you're going to have some lousy people who lie and twist things around. Atheists have them, too, the mouth-breathers who have read Nietzsche with all the comprehension of a fundamentalist flipping through the Bible, or middle-class kids who just ohmygod love Stalin or whatever.

What really gets me aren't the silly, stupid and unscrupulous people, but the absurd beliefs. Even if a religious person agrees with evolution, they're still believing in some other equally absurd miracle!

I mean, it's wrong to think that their god intervened in the manipulation of genetic material to create human life, but it's okay to believe their god is an omnipotent being that created reality? What religious people who believe in evolution are saying is, "Oh, our miracles are better than the miracles of the people over there. They have silly, stupid miracles, as opposed to our splendid and amazing miracles."

It's daft! The giant sky pixie argument is daft for whatever it is they use it for, equally daft in all cases, because there's no proof that any god exists or has existed. That is the real problem with religion - that on the basis of some generally pretty lousy book people are saying that things you can't see, and make no real sense, are more important and more real than things you can see and things that do make sense.

So, c'mon, guys, just because you believe in religion doesn't mean that you should get any slack. All the miracles are stupid. All of them.