It is with unrestrained mirth I read of Intelligent Design stealth attacks on science and evolution in American public schools. I am saddened by the thousands of young minds this quackery is being foisted upon, but the premise of portraying religion as science in the year 2005 is so cognitively dissonant, so delusional I can only laugh.

Word one to Creationists/Intelligent Design advocates: once something enters the realm of science, it can no longer be religious faith. As science, it's now subject to rigorous empirical testing and potential invalidation, just like any other scientific theory. Until you can put the Artist's signature on display, Intelligent Design fails the evidence test in every way.

A point, if I may, that could give Intelligent Design advocates a more productive avenue of thought:

Given an Intelligent Designer, which is the more elegant solution?

1- Kick-start an entire reality and let it proceed according to seeded algorithms.

2- Grow the basic framework but create one "un-evolvable" eyeball and brain at a time, then step in at various points to monkey and tinker with it in order to keep it all rolling along according to "plan."

If a human created a system requiring zero expenditure of energy on maintenance and daily operation we would hail them as an absolute genius. If a human creates a system which breaks down often, needs continual re-working or accomplishes its functions via various Goldbergian routes, we call this "bad design" and suggest the designer take it back to plan.

ID proponents, by arguing only occasional involvement on the part of a Designer for "irreducibly complex" features, are actually arguing for:

1- At best, an imperfect Designer creating in ad hoc fashion because it did not have the skill, dominion or desire to create whole cloth.

2- At worst, an imperfect Designer with no plan at all.

In the long term, this is memetic evolution in action, and Intelligent Design will be its own undoing. By opening the concept up to scientific discussion and abandoning the safety net of designation as "unquestionable Creationist dogma" it will seal its own fate as that of all nonsensical ideas unable to compete: history.

Word two to Creationists/Intelligent Design advocates: weed out the logical contradictions and poor implications of your concepts, then get involved in honest science and experience the truly wondrous "complexity from simplicity" of reality. If there is a Designer, it's far too Intelligent to create something using ID's haphazard human-framed methodology. Science doesn't invalidate the essence of your concept of a Created universe, only historic interpretations of the idea.

"Let there be light" may be a true beginning. Everything after that? We're still working on the translation.