> The latter can have their bible bullshit which qualifies them to work
> minimum wage jobs at Wal-Marts and Burger Kings, while the educated folk
> can have their good jobs that require knowledge and analytical skills.
>
> What is wrong with that?
>
> ========
>
> There isn't a great chasm separating the 'uneducated' believer from the
> erudite non-believer as you seem to think. In fact, no such crude
> division exists at all in the U.S.
>
Unless you're pretty familiar with evolutionary biology or work in a field related to it I think it's not too hard for a smart person, especially one with spirtual leanings, to swallow the line that scienctific evidence doesn't match up to the claims of evolutionary theory. It's just like with world affairs, if you're pretty well insulated from the facts on the ground it only takes a mild propaganda framework for reasonably intelligent people to maintain an out-of-whack outlook. Intelligent Design actually has a particular knack for pushing this kind of effort in that it doesn't try to advance any easily falsifable claim like standard creationism (e.g. the earth is only 10,000 years old) but instead tries to to take legitmate disagreements in evoluationary biology and frame them as paradimagtic crisis that undermines the whole field. It's less about proving the bible literally accurate than clawing out some room for god to act directly in the creation of life.
Anyway, Intelligent Design, though more sophisticated, is just as bunk as normal creationism and it's instrumental value is to push religious fundamentalism on the population and the answer to that of course is, as previously stated, fuck religion.
Arash