Designs of the Times. That is admittedly one heck of a title, for a thoughtful post by Jason Von Steenwyk at his Countercolumn blog.

For those who may not be familiar, Intelligent Design (ID) is a growing approach to reconciling a faith in God and the genetic, archaeological, and other scientific artifacts that have been used to support the Theory of Evolution. I am not the expert by any means, but my understanding is that Intelligent Design presupposes the existence and active working of God in bringing creation about, but that the actual mechanisms He used to create the fantastic diversity of life include a designed, planned evolution.

Intelligent Design posits that this incredible diversity of life in all its forms, the amazing symbiotic collection of survival strategies, the ability of life to fill every niche imaginable, the development of astonishingly complex life components, can only be explained by the existence of a Designer, a Consciousness and Intellect who created these mechanisms, and many more we can't even begin to fathom.

From here, adherants to one strain or another of ID go their separate ways, and there are some otherwise devout believers who maintain their faith, their knowledge of God, acceptance of Jesus as His Son, and even the truth of the creation as described in Genesis, but suggest that God's time and timescale are not ours, and that the Genesis sequence of God's creation of life might correlate with the evolutionary pathway God designed.

It's an intriguing argument, but passions run high, for and against, within both secular and religious communities.

Jason Von Steenwyk's post on Intelligent Design touches on ID, and discusses it in light of recent court rulings on science education in Kansas. What brings Jason to the focus of his headline is the way with which the NY Times uses the headline to mischaracterize ID.