My concern is not religious, but is based on the historical fact that the struggle of ideas often leads to advances in our knowledge. A John Allen Paulos indicates, the attempt to solve the “impossible equations of mathematics led to significant breathroughs elsewhere.

It is one thing to exclude clearly religious creation stories from the classroom. After all, there is no need to spend time wondering if the world sits on the back of an giant tortoise.

But when a “religious” position (e.g., intelligent design) purports to be scientific in nature, we OUGHT to take it on, to point out it’s inconsistences…and to note the ones that it points out in our side of the argument. This creates knowledge–isn’t that what it’s all about?

My problem is that some evolutionary thinker claim that a God is not needed at all to explain things. I can almost agree with that in terms of what we see on earth…but when you rewind back to the Big Bang, atheism doesn’t work very well any longer.

Has there been an infinite number of universes prior to our current one? If so, then there being only so many ways you can arrange all the atoms in the universe, there have surely been an infinte number of IDENTICAL universes–down to someone writing this very letter to Smithsonian!

And if there are an infinite number of universes existing simultaneously (the multi-verse), we are in the same predicament, I think.

Well, do we wish to believe that there are universes that are exact duplicates of ours–down to the finest detail? Isn’t that surely as much about faith as believing God started it all?

It all circles back to faith.

And so maybe it’s OK to put intelligent design to the test over and over…until it finally either proves itself…or goes quietly into that good night.