Why do things go wrong when they are perfect? Groups around the country are trying to get it right. The NY Times carried a story about Dover, Pennsylvania, a small town south of Harrisburg that is being sued by the ACLU and AUSC&S because it is requiring the teaching of INTELLIGENT DESIGN as an alternative theory to EVOLUTION in Public Schools.  Instead of the ill received notion of a new science of CREATIONISM, the proponents of INTELLIGENT DESIGN want curriculum reform to focus on the presence of God in every subject used to prepare children to enter the adult world.  One must question whether adults do, indeed, inhabit the same world in which most intelligent people live and work.

My son out in Silicon Valley had a term for really, really unique and special designs of computer technology.  His term, after he abandoned “neat” as a descriptor, was that such a design was ELEGANT. Such a word celebrates the intelligence of the thinker who created something new that created something new and so on that now makes un-thought of things work and have actually changed the world – without evidence of the hand or mind of God present. Of course, ELEGANT design must be proof of INTELLIGENT DESIGN and CREATIONISTS can claim education as a religious purpose to send children out of the classroom into the work of the world blessing and praising god for all HIS gifts.

Elegant solutions need to be sought for problems with which God seems to have overlooked or deliberately imposed on us.  Problems of war, hunger, homelessness, debilitating diseases and ignorance seem not to be the province of an invincible God who deals in INTELLIGENT DESIGN. The proponents of this approach to the problems of the world through education are believers in miracles and want religion to enter the precincts of the States and the National Government.

There seems to be no end to the meddling of religious groups that want their symbols displayed on public property or think that children in school should show their mezzuzot, crosses, stars of David and habits of dress that proclaim their belief system. These groups want to change the decent and intelligent language of legislation to doom “different” other groups to second and third class citizenship. They refuse to accept simple non-partisan standards for government and want to replace this with particularistic religious ideas as INTELLIGENT DESIGN.

If our children are forced to look at the world through a religious lens of a particular group this would be a travesty.  It should be evident that a God of perfection who had an INTELLIGENT DESIGN for us would not have allowed bad and wrong things to happen not only from time to time but each and every day. INTELLIGENT DESIGN is a campaign slogan for an army of believers.