Intelligent Design Considered Harmful

Here's a disturbing article in which a science-writer finds himself disturbed by the the Christian Fundamentalists' latest chimera, Intelligent Design, which y'all know by now just drives me utterly batty.

I agree with his basic thesis -- so called "Intelligent Design" is an assault not only upon Biology, but upon science itself. It took Sputnik to scare our native theocrats back into their caves; what will it take next time?

Once upon a time (back when I was a seminarian trying to explain what the hell I was doing with my life), I used to explain to people that matters of faith are not beliefs. Beliefs may be contradicted, whereas matters of faith are "more true" than facts. Sadly, I'm now terrified that I may in fact have been more correct about this than I'd realized. We've all seen the mathematical proof that 1 equals 2, and the division by zero that underpins it. Is religious faith similarly dangerous? How can we convince people that religion belongs in the sphere of morality, not the sphere of facts, before they turn us into a psuedo-Christian version of Iran? Or worse, before the socialist utopianists convince us that all morality is wrong because it leads to fundamentalism?