Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote anything. I wish I could point to a good reason, but I have none except laziness.

An article at Open.salon titled Intelligent Design Rules Out God's Sovereignty Over Chance argues that the intelligent design folks have it all backwards. They argue in favor of supernatural intervention and against chance as a mechanism of evolution. To be fair to the IDers, many argue that there is some natural evolution, but at certain points, the divine hand intervenes. They may argue that the hand isn't divine in the sense that it's necessarily the Christian god, but as the Dover trials showed that's a smoke screen. The linked article argues that in addition to being bad science, ID is bad theology. Chance has traditionally been seen as a means of god working in the world. For example, the apostles supposedly cast lots to determine a new apostle to replace Judas. This was seen as letting god make the choice. So if chance is god's method of working, why the need to invoke a divine hand to directly alter an organism to add a flagellum, or whatever this month's ID favorite example of something that real biology hasn't gotten around to explaining yet. ID seems to imply that god isn't in charge of the whole process, but just a magician who shows up from time to time to muck around with certain species. It seems like a strange attitude for believers to profess.

I can't say I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that god determines chance. My notion of what passes for god isn't something that runs things. Or at least if it does, it's also the things it runs, if that make sense. Personally, I think anything said about god is wrong by definition. The god you can name is not real god. The less said the better.

You are Julian of Norwich! It's all about God, to
you. You're convinced that the world has a
happy ending. Everyone else is convinced that
you're a closet hippie, but you love them
anyway.


Which Saint Are You?
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Could be much worse.

Religion

A Roman Catholic priest denied communion to more than 100 people today because they wore rainbow-colored sashes to church to show support for gay Catholics. Once again rather than trying to bring people together, religous authority seeks to divide. The spirit may bring us together, but the letter of the law divides us. The church authorities believe it's better to deny communion to people rather than hear their concerns. I wonder if the church is redeemable. Does religion's good outweigh the evil it does. All over the world, religions is being used to divide people. The examples are so numerous it's tiresome to even try and list them: muslim vs. jew, catholic vs. protestant, evangelical vs. everyone else, shite vs. sunni, us against them. Is religion going to kill us all?

I ran across an astounding web site today. It asks the questions: Do you believe God belongs in government? Do you believe President Bush is doing The Lord's Work? I'm not posting the url because I don't want to give these folks any more links than they already have. From this site you can buy one of those fish things for your car that has BUSH inside it instead of Jesus. I wish it was a joke. What is this country becoming? We've always has our share of looneys, bigots and fascists, but these theocrats are scaring me. They worship Bush, for heavens sake. I'm more scared for my country than I have ever been before, even in the days of the Viet Nam war, I was hopeful, but I'm worried that we are turning a corner in our civic life that will lead to disaster. There are just too many christians who worship false gods.

I ran across this quote on Trevordebenning: To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The great paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God." -Louis Evely, In the Christian Spirit. It really rings true to me.