The other day one of the peeps in my Castle Age guild posted a status update professing his alignment with Creationist doctrine - the way many ignorant sheep do, with a vague ad hominem attack on an actual scientist - in this case, Bill Nye and his Youtube vid debunking creationism. I couldn't resist noting that Creationism is a fringe doctrine that ironically only gained traction in the time since Darwin. The creationist under discussion mumbled something circular about the Bible and pointed to Ben Stein and some other creationist shill.

It's shocking and appalling to me that critical thinking skills have been deprecated in favor of lip service to fringe religion. And I got to thinking, wouldn't it be an exercise in public service to develop an "Evolutionist Manifesto", of course in full consciousness of the creationist invention of the therm "evolutionist" to imply that "belief in evolution" is no more or less valid than their doctrinaire science-denial.

On that track, I googled the phrase "Evolutionist Manifesto" but by the time I started tracking down resonant results, I already realized that the very banner of "[whatever]ist Manifesto" would invite identification with The Communist Manifesto. My first Google result clinched that - it referred explicitly to The Humanist Manifesto.

At that point I felt like the very word "manifesto" had been willingly ceded by the right wing, albeit not before it was infused with the same sort of smutty connotation with which right-wing propagandists and their dupes use the words "socialist" or "liberal". But just a little literary retrospection shows that Ayn Rand, perennial darling of the right wing, gave us The Romantic Manifesto; classical-conservative philosophy curator Mortimer Adler lent his name to The capitalist Manifesto; and more recent authors have revisited the term from the sphere of right-wing values.

Still, I wouldn't adopt the banner of "Evolutionist Manifesto", because it implies an opposition I don't feel: evolution as a doctrinal element of anti-religious prejudice. I might toy with the poetic step from "Ark" (as in, Noah's) to "Arc" (story arcs, the arc of time etc.) if I were inclined to pen a counter-creationist manifesto.

Wherefore pet peeves then - I also almost started a separate piece about another pet peeve, namely colon cleanse quackery. Something resonated between the two subjects, maybe just that refuting something as simple, yet pernicious as colon-cleanse nuttery mirrors in microcosm the slippery, many-tentacled lie of Biblical literalism. And that in both cases, nothing I could possibly say on the subject would dissuade entrenched dupes of either doctrine.