Two Different Questions

I have been reading quite a few articles on the court case in Pennsylvania regarding intelligent design's place in the classroom. The book Of Pandas and People, which was in the school board’s statement, sparked my interest so I decide to look it up. On Amazon.com I read the book's description and then the comments several people made. Most of these comments were less than favorable, one even being sarcastic. The main complaint I garnered from the comments was there was little evidence given supporting intelligent design. This didn't come as a big surprise since intelligent design is not considered a theory and evolution is. Based on the lack of scientific evidence for intelligent design it shouldn't be taught in a science classroom. I fail to see how intelligent design is an alternative to evolution not because of the lack of evidence but because it doesn't deal with the same questions. Evolution describes the process, backed up by evidence, by which life changes over time. Intelligent design claims that because of the complexity of life an intelligent being must have created it. Evolution tries to explain how and intelligent design tries to explain what or who. There really is no reason an intelligent being could not have created and changed life through using the process of evolution. One comment I found in favor of the book was of interest to me.

"Put your faith in the Big Prankster. He's just messing with you. He created the fossil record at the same time he created all the living beings on this planet. This is a test of faith.

Doesn't it comfort you that God would play such a joke on mankind? He gave us the intelligence to figure out the logical progression of life from clues he planted intentionally to fool us, then he gave us a book whose wisdom challenges the logical progression he laid out and told us to believe in it, or else.

Now he's waiting to see whether he can float us on a cloud or roast us on a spit for all eternity based on our decision.

These thoughts are what help me to sleep peacefully at night." quoted from Tony P. Konig on Amazon.com a review of the book Of Pandas and People

I fail to see why Tony's argument that an all powerful being, who plays games with your immortal soul by creating false evidence and telling you to believe otherwise, should be comforting. If anything it should be very scary. Tony's argument also brings into question whether such a God could be considered good since he is lying to us by fabricating false evidence. I prefer to think that God isn't lying to us through fossil records and other evidence. It seems better to think that we are lying to ourselves by seeing conflicts where there really are none and that we are misguidedly trying to convince ourselves otherwise by looking to sources with little evidence.