On evolution
My delightfully rational friends: Here is something you might find refreshing: The NYT publishes an article on unintelligent design that attacks the myth of intelligent design. Of course, arguing with fanatics proves nothing but their own foolishness; however, it makes an interesting read.
I particularly like this:
The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless.
If you say that the intelligent designer is not a god, then it has to be a rational entity from another planet, a thing so advanced that it simply placed everything so as to progress in the way we see today.
But then the whole thing goes back again: who created that entity? How did they come to be? What, when and where?
And then we are back to asking scientific questions.