Intelligent Design?

I watched a television show about the debate over what has been dubbed "intelligent design". Many people are lumping it all into the war between creationism and Darwinian theory. Religion versus science is a never ending struggle. From the days of Copernicus and Galileo, the church has done it's best to keep the strict adherence to the Bible as the basis of our society.
One person on the documentary said that the ultimate goal was to balance science and faith. I have to agree with that .
The goal of Intelligent Design is to get the religious right back into the rule of nations. In a few cases, it appears that they have made the mistake of actually putting that into writing.
The problem is, I like intelligent design as a concept. It just doesn't explain itself the right way.
You see, according to the creationists, the universe was created fully formed, as we know it. Everything is all the plan of God. It just doesn't state where the plan began, who God is and more importantly, how the plan was supposed to work.
I offer this compromise to the empirical scientists and the religious right. The Universe itself is God. It was created in one instant, postulated by science as the big bang, and in the Bible as the void of the beginning. From that point on, the Universe has been evolving, as Darwin hypothesised, following a plan that is the product of the the massed intelligence of the Universe itself. Evolution is the tool of the Universe towards fulfilling the ultimate plan.
This compromise has the effect of putting science into the realm of faith, the faith that there is a plan, and all we have to do is figure out what it is. Religion becomes an integral part of science, a starting point toward understanding the Universe, and a forum for stating theories and letting hard science take over.
I think that, in a way, the teaching of the various faiths has been science disguised as story telling. The Bible tries to explain the way the Universe works. Unfortunately, it is written for a people of a time when there was limited understanding. Taken in context, the scriptures are still valid advice and guidelines for living life. Think of them as the precursor to scientific method.
As the Universe allows us to evolve, we will be permitted to see more and more of the plan. I think that might be the ultimate goal of the design, to get at least one species to the point of knowing the whole, and maybe starting the process all over again.
Unfortunately, we haven't evolved to the point where enough of us can see the plan. We will argue about it for the next hundred years or so. I can only pray that we don't argue ourselves to another dark age. It's taken us over 600 years to get out of the last one.