Down at the Cosmic Casino, the Intelligent Designer is in his eternal shuffling glory. He's creating and destroying and creating again.

If the Intelligent Designer actually had intelligence, he might be pleased that some insignificant bits of superstitious protoplasm on earth are defending his handiwork with all the flawed logic and goofy statements that their tiny little brains can muster. Truth be told, however, the Intelligent Designer may not be very intelligent at all and he's not doing much designing as we normally think of the term.

Those who argue for the so-called intelligent design of life often analogize living things to machines and then rely on the argument that randomness can't put together pieces of plastic and metal and build, say, an automobile. And, right they are. It took intelligence to do that. Someone designed the automobile and built it. You'll get no argument from me on this point. But, it's a non sequitur. And, it gets worse. Those pushing this theory then leap to the false conclusion that randomness can't put together living things. Give them your ear and they'll talk it off with sophomoric arguments about how various parts of the human body are extremely complex and how it would be impossible for these parts to evolve and how Darwin got it wrong, blah, blah, blah.

Baloney.

In the first place, an automobile is not a living or natural thing. It's a natural apples and plastic pears comparison. To even begin the argument with that as an example is to start stepping off in the wrong direction from which you may never recover. An automobile is not flesh and blood. It's not even plant tissue. It is obviously a manufactured item that has been built from various things. It does not have the shape or the qualities or the characteristics of the natural things that are found in the universe. By contrast, ALL natural things, from star systems to rocks to trees to human beings and everything else that is naturally in existence, do have the shape and the qualities and the characteristics that are capable of being formed naturally by very simple principles that require no intelligence.

What is the main principle that has designed everything in existence? Spinning. Period. From the spinning comes everything and to the spinning goes everything. It is the spinning that shuffles and sorts things out. And, within the spinning many other forces and influences take place to form all matter. All of existence is spinning. If the spinning were to stop, existence would stop. All of existence is very simple. Only the explanation is complex.

Consider life. All life that we know of (except some viruses, apparently) comes from the inner genetic blueprint of DNA. DNA, in turn, is composed of four chemical bases that are usually abbreviated A, T, C, and G. These bases are ordered in long spiral strands. Remember that word "spiral."

While these four chemical bases, A, T,C, and G are often thought of as the building blocks of life, a better metaphor in some cases may be to think of them as playing cards in huge decks of cards. Millions and millions of playing cards each one bearing just one of those four letters.

Shuffle that deck of cards one way and you have a mouse. Shuffle the cards another way and you have a man. Look at the DNA of both creatures and you'll find they're amazingly alike. Isn't it odd that man, who is supposed to be just lower than the angels, is so much like the mouse? Why is this the case? The answer is that they are made of the same stuff. They are just shuffled differently. Tiny little differences in the shuffle make all the difference in the world. It is the same with the different types of humans. We're all alike, yet we are all different. And, it is the differences that are important to evolution, not the alikeness.

But surely there must be more to this. God must be involved in some way with this thing we call life and especially with human life. I mean, aren't we just so special and unique? Maybe. Maybe not. Remember the spiral shape of a strand of DNA? How is a spiral formed? A spiral is simply a circling or spinning through three dimensions and through time. Think water draining from your toilet. Think hurricanes. Think tornadoes. Think the way trees grow. Think of the natural ordering of different colored paints in a can of paint when the paint is gently spun. There is a natural order born of the spinning. The spinning sorts things out. It builds and it destroys. It is the cosmic furnace and the cosmic lathe. The spinning is life. Look inside the atoms of every thing in existence and you'll see the spinning. Look at entire galaxies and you'll see the spinning.

Take that deck of millions of cards that make up our DNA and begin spinning them so that they shuffle and reshuffle all the time. One card changed here leads to a small variation. Another card changed there and there's more variation. Add in various other factors from our environment and from nature and the shuffle has immense variability.

Again, is an intelligent God required to produce life? Not really. However, this is not to say there isn't a God. One can accept this spinning premise but still believe in God by asking who or what started the spinning. Could it be that God just gave everything a spin and the great shuffling machine of existence then began? Those who so wish, can choose to believe that. Those who don't, can say that the spinning is just a natural part of existence--a sort of cosmic Coriolis Force.

Believe in an Intelligent Designer if it gives you comfort in life, but if you do so, don't denigrate someone who finds his comfort in life by believing that swinging a chicken around his head brings rain.

Religion is important less for who or what is worshipped than for the purpose and hope that it gives to humans in a universe that might otherwise seem meaningless and without purpose. The blessing of having a mind capable of thinking the intelligent thoughts that humans can think about existence and meaning can also be a curse.

Envy the imbeciles, for they are the ones who are truly happy.