The article begins with a hypothetical dialog between some school children.

You're sitting in the cafeteria with a few people from your biology class. The talk around the table is going a little bit of everywhere and not much of anywhere. Somewhere in the conversation, between chatting about dates and a killer bio test, you casually mention the church retreat you attended last weekend. Someone asks, "You go to church?" Another asks, "You believe in God?" Another says bluntly, "I don't believe in God. How can anyone even know if there is a God?" [1]

My first thought is, wow! What school did these people attend? I only wish kids had conversations like these when I was in high school. When I was in grade school and high school nearly every one of my classmates believed in God by default. (In other words, that's how they were brought up, and they had never really given it much thought.) It is truly rare to hear somebody below the collegiate level discuss the existence of God, much less declare themselves an atheist. The story continues with the following.

You listen uncomfortably as everyone else talks about how evolution disproves God. You leave the cafeteria feeling defeated, maybe even wondering if intelligent people really do believe in God. Yes, says Christian writer Paul Little, many intelligent people do believe in God—and with good reason. In this adaptation from Know Why You Believe, Paul offers some evidence that should not only help strengthen your beliefs, but also give you something to say when the lunchroom conversation turns toward religion. [1]

Why should you be uncomfortable when somebody makes a claim that contradicts something you believe in? After all, you believe in it because of the evidence that has been presented to you supports that belief, right? You should be able to defend your belief, or, if necessary, change your belief to better fit the evidence.

Of course, anybody who states that evolution disproves God has no idea what they're talking about. (Which might be expected if these are 9th grade biology students.) The theory of Evolution makes absolutely no claim about God, nor does it make claims about the origin of life. Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection simply suggests a means by which biological life forms can change and adapt to their environment. While this may be a domain typically reserved for God, it no more is an attempt at the disproof of God than the biological explanation for disease was an attempt to disprove the existence of God because many believed that disease was God's punishment for sinners.

I completely agree that many intelligent people believe in God. Some of my personal heroes, like Thomas Jefferson, believed in God. But there are also a lot of intelligent people who don't believe in God. Who believes something has absolutely no affect on whether or not that belief reflects reality. As a counterpoint, however, I suggest reading How We Believe, by Michael Shermer. In it, Shermer shows a direct correlation between the level of education of an individual, and the likelihood they will not believe in God.

The article then starts in with the evidence they say supports the belief in God. Let the fun begin.

OK, we'll admit something right off. It is impossible to put God in a test tube or prove him by scientific method. But that shouldn't cause us to say, "God really is dead!" Hardly. In fact, there are many reasons to believe that God is very much alive and active in the universe. [1]

Why does the scientific method always seem to require test tubes? Well, it's nice to see that they have given themselves the all important "out". When confronted with facts and knowledge obtained through science that seems to disprove their beliefs, they will just say, "Hey! You can't put God in a test tube!". Anyway, with that much needed disclaimer out of the way...

Think about humanity's overall longing for something beyond what we see. It's this longing that causes people to turn to religion for answers. [1]

Agreed, but it is also what has caused people to turn to science for answers. Last I checked, science has proven itself to be a pretty darn good tool for answering many questions humanity has had over the past few hundred years. There are certainly some questions science has not been able to answer, and may never be able to answer, but that doesn't automatically mean that the answers provided by religion are the correct ones.

It is significant that studies of the world's cultures show an almost universal belief in a god or gods. [1]

This is a very interesting, and correct point. (A point which is thoroughly addressed in Michael Shermer's book.) As I mentioned before, however, how many people believe something is not necessarily proportional to how true that something is. Close to 80% of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, and 60% of people believe in some form of ESP. Only a few hundred years ago the vast majority of people believed in a lot of things that we now know are not true. It is not how many people believe in something that matters, but why they believe.

There are approximately 11 million species of life on earth, including humans. Did all of these, including the universe itself, begin by chance? [1]

Of course they didn't, and no biologist I've ever heard would claim that they did. This is called begging the question, and it is a logical fallacy. First of all, the number of species on Earth is a much debated question amongst scientists. The actual numbers range from between 10 million and 50 million. Second, as I've stated previously, evolution makes no claims about how life or the universe began. Third, species evolve through natural selection, not by chance. One component of natural selection is the chance mutations of genes in an organism which can then lead to evolution or extinction, but a dinosaur doesn't turn into a bird by chance. It turns into a bird by millions of years of natural selection.

Science doesn't yet have an answer for how the universe began, or even for how life began, although there are many theories. The fact that science can not yet explain something does not therefore prove the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being. That's another logical fallacy called non-sequitur. That makes two so far, not that I'm keeping score or anything. (Actually, I am.)

Scientists have claimed that given the right conditions, some sort of life form would eventually evolve. How ever, the same scientists who propose this theory are quick to point out its weaknesses. [1]

Well, some scientist have suggested that life may be common throughout the universe. They claim that as long as the basic building blocks are there, given enough time life will form. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that life may have formed multiple times on Earth alone. This, of course, is completely unrelated to whether or not God exists. And yes, scientists often point out the weaknesses in their own conjectures. That's a great thing about science; it's self correcting. The point of science is to seek the truth, and part of that is correcting errors even if they are your own. When was the last time any major religious upheaval came from within the church? Seems to me that it's always some external force that is sick of the way things are and forces change from the outside.

The respected astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle asks, "What are the chances that a tornado might blow through a junk yard containing all the parts of a 747, accidentally assemble them into a plane, and leave it ready for takeoff?" Hoyle answers, "The possibilities are so small as to be negligible even if a tornado were to blow through enough junk yards to fill the whole universe!" [1]

That's nice. Not sure what it has to do with evolution, though. Again, evolution is not a product of chance, it is a product of natural selection. Chance is one of many components (and perhaps not even the most important one) in natural selection.

In his book The Intelligent Universe, Hoyle says, "As biochemists discover more and more about the awesome complexity of life, it is apparent that its chances of originating by accident are so minute that they can be completely ruled out. Life cannot have arisen by chance." [1]

Maybe this is why Hoyle was an astronomer and not a biologist. There are a multitude of ways life may have formed for the first time. Perhaps it formed on a lattice of silicon laid down in a river bed. Perhaps it formed after some unlikely catalyst like a lightning strike on some primordial soup. How it formed, while being a fascinating question, has little impact on the question at hand - why believe in God? If life cannot be formed without pre-existing life (a creator), who created the creator? If the creator can exist without anybody creating him, why not just skip a step? Is it not more believable that a bit of goo could turn into a simple living organism that it is to believe that an all powerful, all knowing God could pop into existence all by itself? None of this is evidence for the existence of God.

Dr. Robert Jastrow, founder of NASA's Institute for Space Studies, says that the Big Bang theory offers scientific evidence for a biblical view of how the universe began. This respected scientist says that "science has proven that the universe exploded into being in a certain moment." He further explains that this sudden explosion points to a truth found in the very first sentence of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." [1]

Dr. Jastrow is indeed a respected scientist, but to my knowledge (and some extensive Google searching) he has never published his "findings" in any peer reviewed scientific publication. I suspect it's because he made these remarks while "preaching to the quior" as it were. When you expose your ideas to criticism (as is required by science), you need to be able to support them with more than a vague quote from a book of unknown origin. Also, which version of Genesis did the good doctor pick? There are several, after all, and the order of events (and the events themselves) differs in each.

So we see that current scientific evidence for the Big Bang theory points toward a Creator God. And it affirms something King David wrote several thousand years ago: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalms 19:1). [1]

Huh? Wait... where did we see the evidence? So far you have some vague quotes with no evidence to back them up whatsoever. I love it when these things boil down to Bible quotes, as they almost always do.

Another evidence for the existence of God, says Christian writer C.S. Lewis, is that people everywhere in the world believe in some idea of right and wrong."That's my seat. I had it first! Suppose I did the same to you! How would you like it? Come on, you promised. … " These daily arguments show that there must be some law or rule of fair play or morality built into us. [1]

Absolutely, and there is an enormous amount of evidence that this sense of morality has its origins in our evolution. Ask any anthropologist who has studied apes in the wild about morality and they will tell you wonderful accounts of the human-like sense of fair play amungts apes. Capuchin monkeys, for instance, can often spot when another monkey is lying to them, or when they're trying to cheat them out of their fair share.

Two plus two will always equal four. And just as there are math "laws" that can never change, the same is true of moral law. [1]

Wow. That's quite a statement. So, is killing always immoral? What about if it is in self defense? What about in times of war? What if the death of one will save many others? What if that person has killed many people and their death is punishment? The fact of the matter is that the moral choice depends on the circumstances, just like the answer of four depends on the two numbers you're adding together. My morals don't come from God, they come from reason and logic.

Yes, there is Somebody behind the universe. He has put a moral law within us, and he is intensely interested in right conduct—in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness. [1]

How does that follow? Because you are unable to justify moral behavior without the fear of eternal hellfire, that means that there is a God who cares whether or not I look at a nudie magazine or if I covet my neighbor's goat? (Hey, not that kind of covet, you sicko!) Wow, that's a BIG non-sequitur.

Even though there are many things in nature—even human nature—that point toward God, we could never know conclusively from nature that he is or what he is like. But God has taken the initiative to reveal himself. He has lived among us. He has made his full invasion into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. [1]

Actually, there are plenty of things in nature that, if God does exist in accordance with the Bible, he would have had to explicitly created to fool us into thinking that he doesn't exist. For instance, we know that the universe is a least 14 billion years old. We know this because we can figure out how far away stars are (through techniques such as heliocentric parallax), and we know how fast light from those stars travels, so we can figure out how long the light from those stars has been traveling to reach us. If the universe really was only a few thousands years old, God would have had to create the light from those stars "en route". In effect, he would have had to trick us. Doesn't sound like the kind of God I want to worship, thank you very much.

The author then goes on some kind of rant about God becoming and ant or something. I really lost interest at that point. He continues to use the Bible as his only source of "evidence" for all the claims he is making, which, by the way, are themselves also all from the Bible. (Another logical fallacy! How many does that make?)

This article might actually be kind of funny if it wasn't designed to help indoctrinate helpless kids into their religion. Almost everybody who is religious inherited their religion. Much like drug dealers, they go after them when they're young to get them hooked. Once they start, it's hard to stop.

I'm going to start my own child welfare ad campaign in the tradition of Nancy Reagan. I've already come up with my slogan. "Just say no to religion".