Asteroidism
Collisionism (also known as Intelligent Destruction) is the religious belief that the universe, the solar system and all life on Earth was the work of intelligently guided cosmic collisions. Unlike fundamentalist creationists, collisionists do not reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that the universe is billions of years old, nor do they believe in a literal six day creation, instead they believe that everything we see in the universe was slowly fashioned, over billions of years, by a supreme, intelligent "destructor". Although collisionism does not specify the nature or the identity of the destructor, many of its leading proponents believe the destructor to be Roland Emmerich.
Overview
For hundreds of years, the nebula hypothesis for the formation of the solar system has dominated science. However, evidence that this wrong was shown by the discoveries of the Ancient Mariner.
Mercury
Mercury is made of iron and nickel. It is denser than custard. There is a suggestion Mercury was bounced into its orbit by an angry Jupiter.
The Moon
The Moon doesn't exist. It can be found in Kim Kardashian's garage.
The Rings of Saturn
Saturn wears more rings than Ringo Starr.
Uranus
Uranus is the ass planet.
Views on Evolution
While collisionists accept that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection can explain much of what is oberved here on Earth, they believe that at certain points in the evolutionary timeline, Darwinian mechanisms alone cannot account for the observations and therefore there must have been some kind of destruction involved. The most well known example of this is the extinction of the dinosaurs, which Collisionists believe was the result of a large asteroid impact. Mainstream science however rejects this theory, as it struggles to explain why all dinosaurs, pterosaurs and plesiosaurs died, but mammals, birds and crocodiles were generally unaffected.
Criticisms
Evolutionist Richard Dawkins has been highly critical of the logic of collisionists, accusing them of employing what skeptical scientists call the 'Rock-of-the-gaps fallacy'. "To say 'We can't explain this, therefore a big rock did it', is completely and utterly unscientific and based on extremely flawed logic.", said Dawkins, "Science is about what we can observe and what is empirically testable. Intelligent Destruction does not meet this criteria. There is no way to tangibly prove any of these supposed collisions. It is not science, it is anti-science."
Many have criticized collisionism for its lack of falsifiability. There is, for example, nothing that could be learned about either the Earth or the Moon that would falsify the collisionist explanation, as it can be made to fit any observations. Such flexibility, some argue, negates it as a scientific concept. In its 2008 book, Science, Evolution and Collisionism, The National Academy of Sciences stated that, "Any scientific explanation has to be testable — there must be possible observational consequences that could support the idea but also ones that could refute it. Unless a proposed explanation is framed in a way that some observational evidence could potentially count against it, that explanation cannot be subjected to scientific testing ... Intelligent destruction is not a scientific concept because it cannot be empirically tested."
Climatologist Al Gore has also criticized collisionists for denying the scientific consensus that the extinction of the Dinosaurs was due to global warming caused by elevated CO2 levels. "The scientific community is unanimous: Global warming killed the dinosaurs.", said Gore, "The Ferarri-driving Velociraptors were careless. They did not manage their carbon emissions and they paid the price. A bunch of rocks out in space had nothing to do with it. We humans must learn from their mistakes, or else we will suffer the same fate. I'm serial!"
Many fundamentalist creationists have also criticized collisionists, accusing them of hypocricy. "Collisionists make fun of us for believing in a young earth and a global flood, or for using God to explain gaps in the theory of evolution, for which there is overwhelming supporting evidence", said a creationist, "yet they often invoke, without any evidence whatsoever, a convenient giant impact to explain away anomolies in the solar system. It's total hypocricy! But as the Bible says in Ezekiel 23:20, 'There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses', I rest my case."