Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.

Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.

Thus, in its relation to Christianity, intelligent design should be viewed as a ground-clearing operation that gets rid of the intellectual rubbish that for generations has kept Christianity from receiving serious consideration.

Government has a legitimate sphere of operation. The problem arises when that sphere continually expands, encompassing areas where government lacks legitimacy.

Any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient.

I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong.

Because we don't see the evil destroyed now and thus experience the suffering that evil inevitably inflicts, we are tempted to doubt God's existence and goodness.