Both to intentionally detract from the abortion thread, and because I'm in a tense mood, here's something different:

I support Intelligent Design, and I didn't even realize it until a few days ago. Here's my belief, which I feel is the perfect, most elegant marriage of science and faith (aka: religion):

God is the particulate building block of all existence. If you break down any atom to its subatomic parts, then break down those parts further and further, eventually you will find a single type of particle. This particle obeys an unfathomably complex set of rules which dictates how it functions in the proximity of other particles of its type. For example, when a certain set of these parts are arranged in a certain way, they form a subatomic particle (or an energy particle?); which, when in proximity of other particles, forms an atom; which combines with others to form matter.

This God does what every religion wants it to; explains the great mysteries of "what guides us?" and "what are we?". We are guided by the ruleset of this particle as it flows up to higher orders of matter, energy, and other forces. Everything we say and do, in the past, present, and future, is guided by the interactions between the God-like particles and its neighbors. If you could gather and arrange enough particles into the form of an existing cactus plant, your new plant would exist and behave exactly identical to the original. This is impossible, however, because the second plant would exist in a different part of space, thus being influenced differently by the proximity of neighboring particles, giving it slightly different properties.

So, God is passive, in that it just sits there as the foundation of reality. But it is active since its interaction rules govern every action. As such, fate is predetermined. If the rule set was known, the past, present, and future of any existing object could be calculated. Thus, we are products of Intelligent Design. Though the design may not have been intelligently crafted, it imitates such by ditcating our actions.


On a slightly related note: It seems limiting that we must receive feedback from an item in order to observe it. Couldn't we calculate the existence of indirectly-observable objects? In other news, I think I've tentatively wrapped my mind around 6th dimensional existence. 7th, though, eludes me. Clearly I'm going insane (or I need to get out more).