Can we just get the new guy in already?

Here's current EPA Administrator and Bush appointee, Stephen Johnson, on the relationship between religion and science.

It’s not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there’s theistic or God-controlled evolution and there’s variations on all those themes.

Let me address that first sentence. YES, there is a "clean-cut division". When religions stop making empirical claims about reality that are proven wrong through methods of inquiry, then we can agree with Mr. Johnson's statement.

But, I suppose this shouldn't come as any surprise since he was appointed by someone who said the following:

Well, I think you can have both. I think evolution can -- you're getting me way out of my lane here. I'm just a simple president. But it's, I think that God created the earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.

Yes, the creation of the world is mysterious. That's why universities have physics programs so we can encourage the best and brightest minds to work towards unraveling this mystery. They do this through observation, testing results, and re-testing results over and over again until they can reach some kind of consensus about matters of fact. Attributing such things to a god basically is where the line of questioning stops. Why try to figure out anything if you can just say, "Well, god did it. That's good enough for me."

Keeping my fingers crossed that Obama will not be appointing any religious kooks into our government.