A fascinating meditation on the divine origins of Microsoft's Windows XP reaches us from the former Watergate jailbird turned fundamentalist Christian, Chuck Colson.

Colson was Richard M Nixon's Special Counsel, and in 1974 served seven months for obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal. Since then, he's rehabilitated himself as a moderate lay preacher, and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

"Can you imagine anyone reverse engineering the new Microsoft software," he asks. And before we you can say "Ximian... Miguel de Icaza!", Colson continues "....and concluding that natural processes put it together?"

Colson then weaves together the existence of Windows XP, DNA, to the tentative conclusion that perhaps we shouldn't dismiss creationism out of hand.

"Does Windows XP somehow prove that Bill Gates or his engineers don't exist?" asks Chuck, incomprehensibly.

"I don't think so," he concludes.

The mere existence of the new version Windows should have us all pondering where we came from, advises Colson:

"The recent release of Windows XP illustrates the concept of intelligent design. If Windows XP points to Bill Gates, how much more do the marvelous complexities of DNA point directly to God, the great Intelligent Designer?"

Well, as the Good Book almost, but not quite, says: it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than get WPA to work after changing your motherboard. ®

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Colson on Windows XP