In ancient times there were thought to be many gods governing all types of physical activity. Terrestrial gods governing things on the Earth and cellestial gods governing things in the heavens. Even your sexual arousal was governed by a god, like the Canaanite Baal. The multiplicity of gods was debunked 4,000 years ago as it was perceived all events [I say all events] were under one unifying cohesion except man who seemed in rebellion against the best design and practise of nature and relationships.

Since the universe had one unified state where all behaviour of planets, known activity on earth, and processes of life were coordinated, or unified - hence the conclusion there was but one God over all and in all.

If present matter happened by a multiple series of unrelated accidental events, it is natural that all these things would be on conflicing courses and chaos would be the nature of design. Though chaos is present it does not interfere with the cordinated design of life. Where there is life there are cycles of maintenance and decay operating that identify a unity. The unity gives notion to the singleness of design of life in the universe. That One God gave life its character and design.

The resurrection of Jesus was a physical event that involved his own human body. Jesus said after his resurrection that he had flesh and bone; that he was not a spirit. See Lk. 24:39 "Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”

There had been no essential change to his body except that he had regained its normal functions. The miracle of change was his spirits ascention to heaven 40 days after his resurrection.

I promised something by the weekend on Intelligent design. While I’m an Engineer by training with a bit of theology thrown in, I did study Zoology 1 at Sydney Uni under LC Birch and Uncle Tom the Naturalist (ABC Radio Argonaut listeners will recall him) with liberal doses of Darwinian evolution drummed into us by both men - one a professing Christian, the other probably an atheist. Ever since, I have maintained an interest in “origins of life” issues, moving over time from a “theistic evolution” to an “old earth creationism” position as many of my fellow Christians have done.

I think Peter probably unwittingly set the dogs on the wrong target. Peter used the term “Intelligent Design” when he actually meant “young earth creationism”, from which, using a somewhat exotic Barthian dialectic, he wished to distance himself from. Peter was actually looking for more interaction on his theological argument in which we disappointed him, preferring instead to go on a evolution creation bash.

The ID movement was started as recently as 1991, with the publication of “Darwin on Trial”, written by a noted US legal academic, Philip Johnson, in which, using his legal training to full effect, he subjected the main lines of evidence for evolution to searching critical examination. In the process he laid bare the philosophical underpinnings which have always been evolution’s strongest suit – basically, that it is a worldview that replaces supernatural creation with philosophical naturalism to the effect that a Richard Dawkins was able to say evolution, “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. Johnson’s argument is that “it is this animus to theism and Christianity”, and I quote my good friend Bill Muehlenberg, “not the empirical evidence, that keeps people committed to Darwinism”

Everyone, including the scientists, can see the design in biology. Its “how to explain the appearance of design” that begins the argument. Michael Behe, tenured professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University has promoted “irreducible complexity” present in the simplest organisms capable of independent existence as a problem for Darwinian evolution. Well, I haven’t space here to set out the arguments - if you haven’t done so, I encourage you to go and read Johnson and Behe (Darwin’s Black Box) and the earlier “Darwin: A Theory in Crisis” by the Australian molecular biologist Michael Denton, just as we all had to read those tomes on evolution and still do so in their critiques of ID.

ID will not go away. A rather large proportion of the population cannot envisage a creation without a creator, and these days they are finding a great deal of encouragement. This doesn’t mean evolution has no place. Behe is willing to allow quite a deal of space for evolution. He doesn’t even say the IDer need be God, though as a Catholic, he finds it “congenial” to think the IDer is God

We know ID is having some impact when we hear of Anthony Flew, one of the world’s leading philosophers abandoning naturalism for an IDer, (though not to the extent of embracing the Christians’ God).

More recently Philip Skell, a member of the US National Academy of Science, having investigated all the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century write in The Scientist, “”modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodology, not from an immersion in historical biology”, and again he says, “I found that Darwin’s theory had provided no discernable guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss”. Just so.

It is sad to see the scientific community, by and large close their ranks against ID (but heresy is a terrible thing and its consequences unmentionable), much as the Church against Galileo, but then they (and especially the atheists among them) have so much to lose.

However, some stage, Kuhn’s paradigm shift will occur.

As is obvious from the above I think evolution is a good theory of the origin of life. Certainly progress in biology is dependent upon new techniques and not so much on newly discovered aspects of evolution, however, the theory of evolution is the background to biological research without which it could not be a unified field of knowledge.

I need not go further into the evolution/creation debate, that has been done very well by others on these pages. It must also be obvious from my original article that I have theological objections to how ID is used; as evidence for the activity of God. It is a sound tenant of theology that it is God who discloses Himself to us not us who discover Him. If God had not chosen to reveal Himself He would remain hidden. Any theology that displaces the movement of God towards us with the reverse risks idolatry since the God we find will be something created in our own image. This is why that God that is purportedly found as the IDer cannot be the God we hear about in the bible, it is simply a different creature conjured up by our curiosity about the origin of life. The bible illustrates again and again how it is God who calls, makes a covenant, weeps over Israel and finally gives himself over to sinful men and women. There are no passages in the bible in which men seek to find God or argue from nature that God exists.

Sells,
I suggest you research carefully Romans 1: 20 and decide who is observing who in this verse? Or who can observe without excuse? Even His divine character is clearly revealed in Creation for all men to see.

Well god has to do better in both his intentions and revelations to us ordinary human folk.Why let men write books like the Bible and the Koran that are factually incorrect.Why were not these books making the slightest reference to the laws of Maths and science?Surely to know god is to know the his laws which govern and define our universe.

The world took six days to create,yet the universe as we know it is 15 billion yrs old.The world was thought to be flat and the Sun revolved around it.Any revelation to the contrary would have had you put to death by the Pope of that time.We have static religions stooped in tradition,ritual and superstition.In contrast we have a changing, dynamic universe governed by laws of physics and maths.

Intelligent design does not have the weight of scientific analysis behind it like evolution to be taught in science classes.By all means let it be taught in during scripture classes.We have yet to prove that intelligence does exist behind the design.

If our religions do not grow wth the discoveries of science,how can they or their concept of any deity be revelant?