For your reading pleasure

Ran across a pretty good article, originally published last week in the National Review. The author makes a case that Intelligent Design can and does bridge the cultural gap between Islam and the West. It's a bit overambititous, but he is onto something. While I think that ID is still somewhat of a lacking theory, he is definitely correct in asserting that Western culture, especially in its modern manifestation, shares the same responsibility as the East in assessing itself and identifying its major flaws and shortcomings. Specifically, the problem of materialism - in both its philospohical and economic understanding - is one that *must* be addressed and treated here at home if there is ever to be productive communion between cultures.

From all this, one can see that the much-debated cultural gap between the West and the Muslim world is actually a two-sided coin: While the latter has some extremely conservative or radical elements that turn life into joyless misery, the former has extremely hedonistic and degenerate elements that turn life into meaningless profligacy. And if we look for a rapprochement between Westerners and Muslims, we again have to see both sides of the coin: While Muslim communities need reformers of culture that will save them from bigotry, the Western societies need redeemers of culture that will save them from materialism. Of course, the manifestations of the former (such as support for terrorism) are far more dangerous and intolerable than those of the latter, but as root causes, both must be acknowledged.

So obviously true.

Read the whole thing, it's definitely worth the time. Like I said, his defense of ID is pretty weak, so don't get bogged down by the details of that section. Unless overwhelming evidence slaps me in the face, I don't think I'll ever buy into the "irreducible complexity" argument. It's always seemed sort of a cop out to me.

I think my ass is just as well covered theologically if I assume that there are certain undiscovered mechanisms out there that led to the evolution of, say, protein transport. We'll probably figure out exactly what those mechanisms are someday, and that will be really cool, as long as we remember that the whole lot of the universe and every last one of its physical attributes was created and designed and put into motion and is kept running by God's will. See there, problem solved.