Is it any different from indoctrinating children from a very early age to salute the flag and believe in nationalist claptrap about how great the nation is while more and more people are put out of work when they can't be exploited cheaply enough, while spreading the gospel of democracy and freedom, the country assassinates and invades, destroying democracies and supporting groups like the ayatollahs during the 1950s, the muslim brotherhood in the 1950s-60s, Manuel Noriega and supporters, Saddam Hussein and his lackeys, and Osama bin-Laden and the Taliban. It's alright to support administrations that cause millions of bombs to rain down in foreign countries, but they cannot understand how awful that is, even when given a taste of the same experience with 9/11. The vast majority of Americans were so abused as children that when grown they happily voted to have the war in Iraq.

Religionists aren't the only ones who indoctrinate children. The choice between Obama and McCain is a choice of what color they paint the bomb rhetoric. No real political choice is available. You vote for candidate A¹ or candidate A² and that's democracy, though it seems almost like the choices under the Soviets -- except instead of one candidate, you get two almost identical candidates.

Evil is a cheap excuse. Were Americans evil for dropping the atomic bomb on a country that had nothing left to fight with? Were the English evil for using opium as their means of exploiting China in the 1840s? Were the Germans evil when they voted for Hitler in the 1930's? Labelling something as evil separates that something from oneself. We are not evil: they are. We didn't kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis: they were evil and did something or other... umm friends with al-Qaeda, no... WMDs, no. Whatever it was they deserved to die, because they were evil. If they are evil we don't have to think about them as human beings. We have a reason to have them killed with a clean conscience.

We should deal with things in clarity. Religion is not evil. It is an ancient system derived for dealing with a world very different from ours. Although its day has passed, it has developed such a large user-base that it is maintained from habit, like the awful English spelling system, or Microsoft Windows. Its users are unable to see anything better and, because it is the system they know, they teach it to their children, and perpetuate what should have gone the way of Zeus. And America will continue to create foreign enemies to manipulate its own population, because that's what it's always done. It doesn't matter that General Motors is now going to the wall because it didn't get out of manufacturing gas guzzlers and into other technologies. This isn't evil: this is greedy stupidity. We will all suffer that lack of foresight. We hang onto things too long, be it money makers, political lies or religions. It is our lack of perception (of reality and where we are heading) that is our greatest enemy. Some of the things that cloud our perception are religions, indoctrinations, geese and their golden eggs.... And the notion of evil is -- in its simplicity -- an obfuscation of reality, just something else that clouds our perception.

spin

(Bracing self for flak.)

fuck NASA?!?! seriously? you've got to be kidding. NASA and SETI are probably the two most important programs and centers for research on the planet. the issue here, is that most people (including you) are stuck in this notion of economy, civilization, religion, god...blah blah blah....understand that we have the technology and "know how" to provide every human currently living with abundant food, shelter, transportation, water, education, and all the rest of the amenities of human life. and we have the ability to do this now. what holds us back is this notion of "working for stuff'. ever stop to think why everyone is required to work if they want to live? maybe i'm getting off on some conspiracy tangent here, and sometimes i do, but wow...i mean...don't you realize that there are a few things called the IMF, Tri-Lateral Commission, The council on Foreign relations, that keep us as slaves till the day we die? they depend on the fact that your "God" keeps you submissive and forces you to sell yourself in order to survive. so as long as theists hold onto that notion of God, you will never see the benefits of science, let alone NASA.

Oh, you mean from here, where you only pasted the second definition out of five possible definitions? 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory

Why not:

1. a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity. Synonyms: principle, law, doctrine.

Or:

3. Mathematics . a body of principles, theorems, or the like, belonging to one subject: number theory. 

4. the branch of a science or art that deals with its principles or methods, as distinguished from its practice: music theory.

5. a particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of doing it; a system of rules or principles: conflicting theories of how children best learn to read.

If definitions actually determined reality, as your post implies, then I'd say I'm winning since the first definition clearly supports me, and the first definition is always the most prevalent.