Tomorrow is my DH's 40th birthday.  I am cooling the cake as I type.  His favorite:  strawberry with cream cheese frosting.  My mother just brought over a birthday gift for him (plus lots of other goodies--she is so thoughtful), and I will pick up my gift to him tomorrow.  Shhhh.

I threw him a surprise party on his 30th birthday, but that was before we had children.  No pulling that off this year!

Tonight, I left work a little early to fit in a trip to the grocery store.  I got a dinner made for my co-worker and friend whose leg was broken.  Sticky chicken!  It smelled so good; I'll have to make one for us soon.  I also saw the doctor (as I blogged earlier) and kept myself busy at work doing an updated inventory of the files.  I met the young lady they will probably be hiring to fill the position I'm temping for.  She seems very nice!  Somehow she reminds me of my sister.  If they hire her, we'll work together for a while until the baby comes.  (Then I get to go home!  Yay!  Or maybe sooner, if DH finds something full-time.)

I made hot cocoa for the kidbots, with marshmallows.  Then we had chocolates with Advent too.  It's not much, a Hershey's kiss apiece, but it gets them keyed up.  They are very excited about Christmas.  Uh oh, it just occurred to me that some of my internet orders have not yet arrived.  Hmmm.

DH is job hunting with a vengeance.  He's got a couple of interim-type prospects (mechanical/technical work) and he's making applications for teaching openings. 

My mind is like a kaleidoscope.  Generally, the thoughts that tumble around in it are happy and bright and optimistic...but ever-shifting, forming unique patterns that never reappear in the same form.  (That was redundant, I know.)  I try to keep lists to stay on track, but the best I can do is accomplish the major-biggies right now.  Ideas flit through my brain that seem great at the time, but barely leave an imprint.  I figure I'll "think about it later" but by then it's long gone, never to be recaptured.

Some of my inability to focus might be lack of sleep.  (The rest might be pregnancy.  Ha!)  I stayed up again last night, to get the laundry folded.  Well, to bed I go as early as possible tonight, whatever may be left undone.  I'll just have to leave the remaining Christmas prep and housecleaning for Saturday, and I'd best be well-rested so I can get to it all.

With that I.D. court decision (PA, wasn't it?), the Derb has been going on about intelligent design again at The Corner.  I don't have much to say about the court case itself, or even about intelligent design, but I must say, I really don't comprehend his thinking.  Not that I'm all that invested in the argument, but I get curious on a philosophical level.  Maybe I've got him all wrong, but he seems to think that science is science, and metaphysics is metaphysics, and that anyone who indulges in metaphysics cannot do science well.  It's a weird sacred/secular-like false dichotomy he sets up.  I know I'm not expressing my thoughts well here (kaleidoscope is spinning again).

My question would be:  If the postulation of a designer is true (and you will hear even many evolutionists claim that evolution does not exclude the possibility of a designer--I still haven't figured out how, in that case, evolution wouldn't essentially be intelligent design), then wouldn't a scientist do better science with that presumption in mind?  Because he'd be doing science that was based on an objective reality.  Right?

It seems to me these guys are dismissing truth that is quite relevant to science by unnecessarily categorizing it as purely metaphysical.  If there really is a designer, it stands to reason that speculation as to his existence should not be confined to the metaphysical realm, because, well, duh,  he designed the physical realm...everything we see, touch, hear, taste, smell:  that is to say, observe (you know...what scientists do).  His fingerprints would be all over it.

Perhaps one cannot prove through experimentation the existence of a designer/God...any more than one can prove theories posited about events no one has ever observed or can duplicate.  But science posits just such theories all the time.  (See Derb's reported conversation with the cosmologist for an example.)  Why arbitrarily leave the existence of God out of it, except as a matter of pure prejudice?  (Am I making any sense?) 

I mean, is he saying that anyone who believes in God/Designer is unqualified to be a scientist?   Are human beings misguided when they are so fascinated by the wonders and workings of the natural realm that they are compelled to speculate from whence it all comes?  Must we really deaden that genuine human impulse in order to be "better scientists," as Jonathan Adler implied in his post (he basically said that the belief that an intelligence designed us is unscientific)?  I think not.  The better scientist is the one who comes closest to basing his science on the truth.  If the truth involves a Designer...well...the scientist who utterly rejects the possibility is the one who's more likely off-track.

Anyway, my own opinion is that one has to be pretty deliberately obtuse not to see abundant evidence of our Creator in nature.  It's "clearly seen," as Paul stated.  All it takes to see it is a basic grasp of logic.

Okay, did you enjoy that little bunny trail?  Now we find ourselves back on the open road again, where I part company with my dear readers and say, "Good night."  And God bless you!