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.

The abortion issue will show fatigue, if it has not already, for Christians, because Republicans seem unwilling or unable to regulate, license, tax, credential, or require net capital from abortionists or their entities, even though the Courts have been quite clear that they will not interfer with legitimate uses of police powers. The reason, of course, is that the Republicans might lose their anti-abortion voting block if the scourge of abortion was merely suppressed, even if abolition was denied them.
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UPDATE (01/21/06): In response to this post, Terry Hull has written: “Attack Abortion with Red Tape?”

Photo (yes, that’s a photo, not a painting!) of the Orion Nebula, taken via NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas. Orion is an emission nebula, a nebula that emanates the light of the stars within it in a splash of colors. Although Orion is 1600 light years away, it is so bright that it is visible to the naked eye (one “star” of the Orion constellation).

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” Psalm 8:3-4

“What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” Romans 1:19-20

An interactive version (zoom in, zoom out, etc.) of the Orion photo is here: Hubble. (Good luck, though, I think the Hubble site’s server is being overwhelmed with hits).

10. Allowing television evangelists on the air without regulating their hair stylists.
9. Allowing radio evangelists on the air without first conducting heresy inquisitions.
8. Allowing society to leap ahead of the church by requiring proficiency exams for doctors and lawyers but not requiring any competency testing for the salaried clergy.
7. Choosing people for church leadership on the basis of whether they are willing to serve communion and take up the offering, rather than whether they know Genesis from Revelation or faith from works.
6. Devoting a big chunk of the church’s missions budget to sending members on annual adventure excursions to foreign countries, even though most of the travelers don’t even bother to learn the language of the people they are ministering to.
5. Funding evangelism on an equal priority with the church’s lawn care needs.
4. Dropping the requirement that people wear formal dress to church, resulting in today’s preferences for shorts, jeans and T-shirts among everyone at every church event.
3. Attacking long hair on men as satanic (at least when I was a kid), while posting pictures of Jesus with hair longer than that of any rock star.
2. The church remains a rest home for believers rather than a hospital for sinners in which everyone enters through the emergency room.
1. The failure of the church to promote Pat Robertson to a suitable emeritus position.

On the subject of Intelligent Design, Jim Phillips writes by email:

I don’t understand the issue about Intelligent Design. I am no fundamentalist, but from what I read, 12 billion years (since the big bang) is simply insufficient time to explain evolution on the basis of random selection. All that means is that the selection is not random, that some power, God, force or inclination makes the selection on some basis other than random chance. Besides (I think) that being acceptable generally to a strict fundamentalist (given some variation in time frames), it is also scientifically true. So I don’t quite get the controversy. I suppose it is always easier to vilify than to love.