My friend Ron Mashore sends an email, with the subject line “Intelligent Design,” in which he writes:

Have you seen the new Lexus commercial on TV? It shows a new car model being developed as a result of two vehicles colliding, exploding, and falling back together just right to create a new luxury auto.

Yes, Ron, I’ve seen that commercial, and I get your point. It is an amusing thing to see, since it is impossible for such a thing to happen in real life. Everybody knows, without asking or even thinking about it, that a new automobile model is the result of painstaking design. Yet when it comes to an entire planet, a solar system, a universe, the question of whether there is an intelligent designer behind it all is controversial. Amazing. In modern American culture it seems that in some areas: the smarter we get, the less we know.