For your benefit, Medievalists study Medieval history like Astronomers study the universe. You make a big deal out of getting your facts straight, so please do.

Yes, you can make anything into an axiomatic belief, but the only reason for doing so is if your framework allows for the generation of interesting results. It seems to me that your axiom that God is somehow distantly involved in physics doesn’t fall into this class. It’s a completely unnecessary axiom which is clearly not needed to do science.

As a secularist, I think you’re bang on! It’s great that you appreciate that our personal opinions shouldn’t be taught in schools unless we have strong evidence to back them up.

As an atheist and as a skeptic, I have to wonder why you would believe that God has helped evolution along since there’s no evidence to support your beliefs. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Yeah, I know everyone involved, anti-evolution or not, is a human being. I’m also aware of the religions involved. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating.

From my point of view (as a relatively moderate Christian who believes that science should be accepted because it can teach us things rather than fought against lest it threaten our favorite beliefs), it’s a mistake to make it an either/or proposition (either genes did what they would do naturally or Goddidit, but not both). Such a view of God’s involvement in the Universe limits Him, and makes Him more limited all the time as we learn more.

To put it another way: with mathematical models like VSOP89, I can predict where the planets will be five years hence with decent accuracy. When they show up there, does that mean that I think God had nothing to do with it? Of course not.

If you’re going to believe that God is involved in the universe, it seems to me that you have to (1) accept it as axiomatic and (2) admit perpetual ignorance as to the exact mechanism He uses. Using God’s involvement in the universe as a means to explain what you don’t yet understand is cheating — kind of like getting the exam answers ahead of time without bothering to understand the material that would have been useful for you to learn (and finding out later that the answer sheet you stole was for a different exam entirely).

Romans 1:20 tells us that there are attributes of God visible in creation. If you honestly believe that’s true, it would behoove you to try to study the universe the way it really is, not the way you wish it were. We must try to find out who God is based on the information we can gather and understand, and worship God as He is as much as we can. Worshipping a God of your own invented and preferred characteristics in spite of what He has tried to clearly communicate about Himself is idolatry.

And this is exactly why I don’t agree with teaching ID of creationism in science classrooms, and why I don’t debate people on God’s existence of try to coerce people into believing my religion. What I do attempt to do in these discussions on the board is to stand up and ask that people keep in mind that there are some of us Christians who feel that we should lead by example and bring Christ into people’s lives through our love for humanity – that not all of us are trying to ram our beliefs down everyone’s throat.

It would actually make more sense to say that Satan is responsible for the decimal expansion of Pi:

“A curiosity relating pi to the beast number 666 involves adding the first three sextads of pi. First, note that

141592 + 653589 + 793238 = 1588419.

Now, skip ahead 15 decimal places and note that the sum is repeated as

3.141592 653589 793238 [15 digits] 88419 7169399375″

!nataS teews ym ot s’ereH