Intelligent Design Comedy

[Kingswood]

The ID stuff is amusing on so many levels:

1. Sunday schools that teach the Genesis story of creation are not required to comply by the same rules. If Sunday schools were made to follow the same rules, they would be required to state that Genesis is a creation myth and that equal time should also be given to the teaching of other creation myths.

2. Intelligent Design is bad theology. It reduces the role of the deity to a genetic engineer slightly in advance of the current technological state of the art. The deity wouldn't be a designer, the deity would just go *bam* and everything would be just so.

3. The Bible does not specifically deny evolution. When it says that God created these creatures and then God created other creatures later, it does not state how. Evolution is the mechanism. It is especially interesting to follow the chronologies of Genesis and modern science and find that in many cases both agree on the order in which creatures arrived on the earth. Instead of creating a fuss about the differences, I believe religion would be better served by highlighting these similarities.

4. Intelligent Design is intentionally written for theological ends and invites speculation on the identity of the designer. Because Nature is red in tooth and claw, it follows that life can only have been designed by a malevolent being, and not a benevolent deity. So if one is forced to speculate on the identity of the designer, say that Satan did it.

Now I'm not against religion. I'm just against religion being used inappropriately.