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.