[Right Wing Professor]

Nice try prof, but...who "wrote" the laws?

You think someone 'wrote' the law of universal gravitation. Why?

Einstein (and others before him and since) express awareness that the existence of natural laws with their extraordinary complexity, is not logically attributable to chance.

Actually, Einstein hoped the laws were simple, not complex. He spent a long time trying to unify gravitation with electromagnetism, for that reason. And why is it more logical to attribute the regularities of the universe to a sentient entity than it is to chance?

They make heavy use of small caps (god), quote marks ("god", and their own metaphors...."cosmic intelligence"

Time for an English lesson. We use upper case only to identify particular individuals. Since Einstein's god was certainly not the Christian god and in fact not a personal god at all, normal usage would not capitalize it.

The scare quotes around 'god' are there to denote that Einstein himself denied he was really referring to a personal god.

And 'cosmic intelligence' is not my metaphor. I resent having words attributed to me that are not mine.

Lack of certainty, and Discomfort on the part of some, about what came before science...should not be a reason to exclude an encompassing dialogue from the science classroom.

The science classroom is no place for a 'Dialogue' (why upper case?) about pre-scientific creation myths, regardless of how prevalent they are in the culture.

[silverleaf]

'cosmic intelligence' is not my metaphor. I resent having words attributed to me that are not mine.

Stow your resentment, "Prof", in my example I said "cosmic intelligence" was a metaphor used by some scientists. Are you a scientist? I had no idea...seemingly you are an English teacher...and one who cannot grasp nuance, at that. Time for a lesson in religion. Some people capitalize God as a sign of respect for a sacred figure or term in several of the world's major religions. People who are not Christian seldom render this respect because they reject the figure. Jews (as Einstein was born but did not observe) use G_d. "Islam" ...whose name is that?

If I had to guess a metaphor for "god" used by you...it would be "natural law"

If you believe it is logical that "natural law" always was and always will be without beginning or end, good luck with that.

I have never read anything about Einstein that suggested he hoped the laws he sought were simple. I have read that Einstein thought that the creator/old one/god (or whatever) was so intellectually superior and/or aloof that the creator/old one/god (or whatever) did not care how simple or how difficult his design was to decipher, and that therefore, the burden of discovery was on mankind.

Assuming you do interact with young minds in a science classroom...and you reject the pre-science "creation myth".... what pre-science myth do you teach? Or do you refer inquiring minds to the steady state cosmos theory from Fred Hoyle's very early work?