Dear Peter,

I can see that Deuc and Timpkins read you correctly, though you may argue with their wording though not the essence of what they say.

I will leave it to the fundamentalists to respond to you if they so choose, though whether any of them would recognise themselves in your caricature of them remains to be seen.

You of course in highlighting "Fundamentalists, Bultman and Barth, fail to mention a rather broad swath of "traditional", "orthodox", "confessional", "evangelical" Christians whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant who affirm the inspiration, sufficiency, even inerrancy of Scripture, whilst being perfectly aware and affirming of the different styles employed in the writing, whether narrative, poetry, wisdom, apocalyptic, and so on. This was rather naughty of you.

You say, "Firstly we end up with a confused understanding of the nature of the physical world in which god can break the usual laws at will making a mockery of natural science. It also produces unsolvable conundrums such as the whereabouts of the bones of Jesus." This confusion I suggest is in your mind. You are allowing your notions of "natural science" to deny God choosing to do as He please. I don’t know what you make of the traditional doctrine of the incarnation that we celebrate every Christmas? I would suggest, to borrow someone else’s phrase, "your God is too small". The Apostles' Creed as understood by the Church down through 2,000 years tells you where the bones of Jesus are and if your science prohibits you from saying so, then I think you need to look at your science again, or more particularly the presuppositions undergirding your science.

Silly me not to realise that this article was not about ID at all, instead just an excuse for theology college undergraduates to strut their arcane stuff.

"We are dealing here not with a cosmogony that explains the coming into being of stars and planets but with the coming into being of the children of God, of the kingdom, of the end of history as the struggle for pre-eminence of one over the other in which the lion will lay down with the lamb etc" (Sells).

This ensures that Sells need only talk to his fellow enthusiasts, as the following exchanges illustrate.

"Psalm 19 & Romans 1 and other passages have already been noted. Calvin (reformed) minimised general revelation for similar reasons I think, so you have good grounds for caution. But to completely reject these sorts of passages without resolving the issues they raise is problematic." (jjh)

"You claim that God created a setting without the thing? hmmm... Hebrews 11:3 deserves more attention, despite the debate about its grammatical structure." (jjh)

"The desire for evidence is post Enlightenment thinking applied to an inappropriate subject." (Sells) (What!!??)

"If the Word was not flesh what was it? The problem with this approach is that it attempts to arrive at a kerygma which is the truth of the gospel and does away with the relationship between us and God. The kerygma becomes a truth in our hands and therefore at our disposal." (Sells again)

I am sure there are many other places where these fascinating and educational debates about the grammatical structure of Hebrews 11:3, angels dancing on the heads of pins etc. can take place in peace and quiet. As it stands, these posts remind me of an exam question I once saw:

Q: Define the universe; give three examples; write your answer using only vernacular Anatolian sanskrit. (20 mins)

Whew! What a divergence of outlooks in the article and comments.
But, back to the article: "It's not a good idea to teach Intelligent Design in our children's biology classes." Could be, from a number of points of view. But, If I were a biology teacher with such a burden placed upon me, I might take the opportunity for some practical demonstrations of "design" for the malleable young minds to decide how intelligent they might be.
Prior to the exercise, I sould in all honesty have to state that the concept of ID was that of a minor number of adherents to just one of the several major religions of the six billon people on this planet, and that this small minority were the only ones wishing to have the concept of ID forced into their science curriculum.
Perhaps the first practical demonstration would be (by video) of a lion despatching and devouring a lamb. By design, if the lion is not up to this task as a normal thing, it starves to death.
Maybe the second demo. would be watching a preying mantis devouring alive the meal necessary for its survival. By design, all its meals are taken this way.
Of course humanity would have to be represented. For teenagers, a dip into Reg. Morrison's "Plague Species" and Mary White's "Earth Alive" would give a wonderful overview of mankind's place on this earth. For immediacy, I would show them video clips from documentaries of the fringe-dwellers of Lima (Peru) and Mexico City, with footage of Swiss suburban life sandwiched in between. Taken together, these three video footages would give some overview of the range of design pertaining in the current Christian part of the world.
Perhaps the Intelligent Designer did no more than has been suggested; and he threw a seed which fell to earth, where and how he does not care.
Whatever "Intelligent Design" is, it has nothing to do with science.

Spendocrat: You argued that “For a theory to stand up to proper scientific testing, it must be falsifiable, that is, there must be a test that could prove it false if it weren’t true. Evolution is the only theory regarding the origins of life that is falsifiable”

This is the standard Popperian line. Maybe you have read Part II of The Logic of Scientific Discovery. But your conclusions are not as firm as you think:

1)“Popper's final position is that he acknowledges that it is impossible to discriminate science from non-science on the basis of the falsifiability of the scientific statements alone” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#Crit, sighted April 2005)

2)“Were the central ideas of Darwin or of the modern synthesis falsifiable? To complicate matters, Popper changed his mind on this central question, viewing Darwinism as a historical hypothesis in Objective Knowledge [1972], and as an unfalsifiable near tautology in Unended Quest [1976].” (http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/DD052SECT3, sighted April 2005). This may be a natural outworking of his view of historicism.

Back to my statement: I think that random evolution as the origin of life should not be taught as fact, especially in schools.

Sells: you mention the first two quests for the historical Jesus. What have you read about the third quest? Any Ben Witherington?

jjh said "I think that random evolution as the origin of life should not be taught as fact"
At this point in time the actual origin of "life" is still a mystery to science so have no fear about it being taught as "fact".
Dang!, we are still trying to work out whether viruses are counted as living!
What this debate is about is whether evolution has led to the variety of life we see today (and in our past) or whether we are seeing some "intelligent" (I'm using that term extremely loosely based on the evidence) designer with very little change since it was 'made'.
And the real crux of the matter is whether the observable and measurable world working to the known laws of science, in an open system with natural variation in climate, energy etc. can lead to the increasing complexity seen in multicellular organisms. or... ID supporters can claim the genetic diversity is due to constant negative mutations applied to perfect, pre-fall creatures and that no mechanism for increasing functionality exists. (Or nothing changes.. but that's a bit daft)
Given these two hypotheses, the question is, which has the larger amount of better quality observable evidence? Given a differing amount of evidence how much time, effort and money to spend teaching on both?
And a large part of this equation would need to be the usefulness and explanatory power of the observable world based on each hypothesis.
One major problem the ID folk appear to have is that thinking God designed everything doesn't get you very far with regard to practical uses of that knowledge. It sure wont help you deal with something practical like bird flu when it aquires new functionality.
And furthermore, as I pointed out before, and I'll do so again because the ID'ers never responded, how do you explain quite bad design? Humans are not perfect and there is no real evidence they ever were (some story in a book doesn't count for evidence here). How come humans didn't get the best eye design? Now that really sucks.

jih, you have one person saying that he does not accept evolution being falsifiable as evidence. If you like, I can provide you with quotes and articles from professors, scientists, anyone important sounding...saying any number of following:

a) The moon landing was a hoax.
b) I've been probed by Aliens.
c) Freemasons run the country.
d) Tin hats block the mind control rays.
e) The apocalypse is coming in 2006, 2008, 2012, etc etc.

What I'm saying is this. Quoting one persons claim means very, very little, especially when you stack it next to the overwhelming consensus of the entire scientific community.

Even if you're only trying to cast doubt on that consensus, it's still not enough to even turn a head slightly. You'll have to do better.