I find it both fascinating and devastating how so many good intentions can bring about so much evil, and how so many people can perfectly believe that what they are doing is good and right, and yet can be so wrong. "Intelligent Design" is a great example of this. Intelligent design as a concept is a good thing- basically the idea that God used evolution, and it provides a way for religion and science to peacefully co-exist. "Intelligent Design" as a theory, however, is the opposite, it hypothesizes that there are things that irreducibly complex, and therefore could not have evolved naturally, so therefore there must be a designer- so it states that evolution cannot be true, therefore religion can be, and that seems to imply that the reverse would also hold true: if evolution is true, religion cannot be. Instead of uniting science and religion, it drives a wedge between them.

Aside from the fact that "intelligent design theory" isn't actually science or a real hypothesis (how do you test that something is irreducibly complex?) and every example they've previously used (eyes, bacterial flagellum) has been thoroughly debunked, the whole concept of trying to make it a scientific theory is wrongheaded.

A lot of good people spread intelligent design misinformation under the belief that it will prevent people from being drawn away from God by evolution. Unfortunately, quite the opposite is true. There is no inherent conflict between science and religion, someone can easily believe in both God and science unless someone comes along and tells them otherwise, religion gives the answer to "why" we are here, science gives the answer to "how" (although I do admit that there could be conflict between science and certain very strictly literal interpretations of Genesis). These people create a conflict by attacking evolution. They make it impossible to believe both. Then, if the person they've taught goes on to learn anything about evolution and can see it proved a thousand times over, how hard it becomes to believe in God when you must choose between Him and something that you can see and prove empirically. Yes, many people have stopped believing in God because of evolution, but only because religious people created a conflict in the first place. If we did a better job of accepting outside truth that may seem strange at first instead of immediately trying to squelch it, these problems wouldn't arise (One more brief note on the subject- like the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, evolution doesn't make God any less glorious, it makes man less glorious, yet man has the audacity to attack it in the name of God).