British biologist Richard Dawkins, one of the leading voices of the “neo-atheist” movement, has taken the latest book-sized shot at the “intelligent design” movement. You can read my interview with Dawkins’ here about his new book: “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.”

For a scientist of Dawkins’ caliber, intelligent design is a barn-door sized target. In a nutshell, it maintains that life is so complex that it must be the work of a creator. Its boosters claim their view is based in science and not influenced by religion, but it is widely seen as a thinly-veiled attempt to give a scientific gloss to creationism. That claim to science is the key here — most religions believe that God created the world, of course, but they state this as an article of faith and not a scientific fact.

On this blog, we often report on issues related to science and religion. We have to remain agnostic on the biggest question of all — does God exist? — and take fundamental dogmas as the starting point for each faith. This sometimes strikes readers as strange or biased. Some think it already shows a prejudice against belief. But just imagine what would happen if we took sides on teachings such as the resurrection of Jesus or the divine origin of the Koran. We would not be practicing journalism anymore, but some kind of theological analysis or deconstruction, and our readers would not be getting the information they want about religion news around the world.

That said, we can’t just take everything on faith alone.  As journalists, we have to stick to facts on the ground. It’s hard to question some beliefs, but we can hold people responsible for what they profess. For example, if a Catholic priest has an affair with a woman, that violation of his vow of celibacy makes his affair different from one between two lay people or two non-Catholics. And if he is prominent enough, like the charismatic Miami television preacher Father Alberto Cutié, it’s worth reporting. The same applies to Islam. The scriptures of most if not all religions can be vague and sometimes seemingly contradictory, so Reuters cannot say whether the phrase  “Islam is a religion of peace” is true or false. But we can report if a Muslim known to preach that belief is found to be involved in some violent activity. In both cases, we don’t question the basic tradition or belief but we hold the believers responsible to it in their actions.

Which brings me to the question of evolution. While preparing this post, I had a lively Dallas-to-Paris email exchange with Religion Editor Tom Heneghan about how we cover an issue in which two sides are so opposed.  We agree with how we’ve been doing it so far, but setting out our approach in words took some consultation. Here’s our view of the issue.

(Photo: Portrait of Charles Darwin, 12 Feb 2009/Gordon Jack)

All serious scientists accept evolution as a fact because of the overwhelming and verifiable evidence that supports it. Much of this evidence is laid out in Dawkins’ new book and a book published earlier this year by University of Chicago scientist Jerry Coyne called “Why Evolution is True.” I regard the latter, by the way, as more readable, especially for a layman. These came out now because this year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th of the publication of his major work “On the Origin of Species,” which originally laid out the case for evolution by natural selection. They have also come out because the authors are clearly irritated by the intelligent design movement.

How does that play out when we report about evolution? For example, when we write about the wildlife of Madagascar, we usually include a background paragraph saying something like: “Madagascar separated from the rest of Africa tens of millions of years ago and so its species evolved in isolation from its mother continent.” In a story about its lemurs, we don’t write: “Scientists say Madagascar broke off from Africa tens of millions of years but some people, taking the Bible as their reference, believe it can only be 10,000 years old and that its lemurs were made in their current form by a supernatural creator.” That would create a false equivalence between the two views. The scientists have empirical evidence for their view of these natural phenomena but the religious view is based on scripture and does not stand up to empirical analysis. This is a case of comparing apples and oranges.

Does this mean we have taken sides and are not being balanced? Hardly. In fact, we would lay ourselves open to that charge if we did give equal credence to arguments such as intelligent design. For instance, some boosters for intelligent design, trying to get their perspective taught alongside evolution in U.S. public schools despite repeated defeats, have shifted their approach and argued that for the sake of balance it is necessary to “teach the controversy” between evolution’s supporters and skeptics. But the world of science sees no serious issue to discuss, just a false equivalence created by campaigners trying to claim the seal of scientific approval for arguments that do not stand up to empirical testing.

So why do we “report the controversy” if we think one side has no case? We do it because creationists are numerous and politically and culturally influential in parts of the United States. They’re challenging science teaching in some states and opening museums that claim to prove evolution never happened. We also do it because their influence is spreading to other countries, most notably to Muslim countries through the work of Islamic creationists like Harun Yahya. And we do it because their arguments, flawed though they may be in the eyes of science, challenge scientists, religious leaders, philosophers and other thinkers to refine their arguments for whichever view of mankind they support. These are serious adult questions and attempts to wedge them into high school biology lessons miss the mark by a mile.

(Photo: Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis, at a creation museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, 26 May 2007/John Sommers II)

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

The current struggles between religion and science in areas such as evolution and “intelligent design” are thrown into sharp relief in a new book on the great Italian astronomer Galileo and his trial by the Roman Inquisition.

Author Dan Hofstadter says the Galileo affair was “the great religion-science clash of 1633 that in some form has persisted into our time.”

Indirectly verifying Hofstadter’s thesis, a Vatican official — Monsignor Sergio Pagano, head of the Vatican’s secret archives — said earlier this month that the Roman Catholic Church should not fear scientific progress and possibly repeat the mistake it made when it condemned Galileo.

The book also explores other terrain that was certainly new for this reader, such as the link between the Baroque movement and geometrics and the moon’s association with the Virgin Mary in folklore and some strains of Catholic thought. Galileo’s study of the moon ran counter to some of these beliefs and may have stoked the anger of some of his opponents.

Read my interview here with Hofstadter, which focuses on the clash between religion and science then and now.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Among the new crop of books with themes that would resonate with readers of this blog, one that caught my eye is Jerry A. Coyne’s recently published “Why Evolution is True”. I rushed out, bought it and read it.

The title says it all and is clearly aimed at an American audience. America’s reluctance to embrace evolution — which is the foundation of modern biology and stems from Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection — sets it apart from almost all other countries in the developed world. Polls generally show that only around 40 percent of Americans believe evolution is true while in most European countries the figure is closer to 80 percent.

A Harris poll in 2007 for example found that only 42 percent of Americans accepted evolution while 62 percent believed in the devil.

Most commentators attribute this to America’s high rates of religiosity. Evangelical Protestants in particular are suspicious of evolution with many accepting the biblical story of creation as they see it as the literal word of God.

There have been various high profile battles over whether or not to teach “alternatives” to evolution in the classroom. “Intelligent design” theory, which has scientific pretensions, is the latest attempt to bring a creationist alternative to evolution into the classroom. In a nutshell, it maintains that the complexity of life can only be explained by an “intelligent designer.”

(Photo: A primate’s skull is displayed in Charles Darwin’s former home Down House, in Kent, southern England February 12, 2009. REUTERS/Tal Cohen (BRITAIN)

Coyne, a professor at the University of Chicago in the department of Ecology and Evolution, is having none of this and he confronts the intelligent design crowd loaded for bear.

Evolution is more than a theory, Coyne points out. It is a fact and is supported — contrary to the claims of proponents of intelligent design — by a wealth of overwhelming evidence. It also makes verifiable predictions. This is why virtually every serious scientist accepts it. (And there are no serious alternative theories to it in scientific circles, another claim made by some of evolution’s opponents. Coyne notes that this does not mean that data or evidence might some day emerge which show Darwinism to be wrong. The point to be made is that none has to date).

Coyne provides many examples to make his case. The fossil record is of course incomplete. But fossils that are found turn up where we would expect to find them (no Precambrian rabbits have been found ). A progression can clearly be seen in the fossil record from simpler to more complex forms of life. The first mammals appear 250 million years ago, arising from reptilian ancestors. This is followed by the first birds and so on. As Coyne notes: “No theory of special creation, or any theory other than evolution, can explain these patterns.”

Much of the discomfort with evolution stems from the fact that many people simply don’t like the idea that humans are related to apes. But the evidence that we are is overwhelming and wishful thinking cannot make it go away. Coyne points out that Darwin himself had conjectured that our species had arisen in Africa because our closest relatives the chimpanzee and the gorilla are found there. Subsequent fossil finds in Africa have indeed shown this to be the case, while DNA testing shows just how close our kinship is to these great apes.

In short, a prediction which was verified.

Critics of evolution also say that there is no “proof” as we have not seen species evolve before our eyes. But what about bacterial strains that evolve — repeat, evolve — to resist drugs? New strains of the tuberculosis bacteria have evolved resistance to all drugs that have been used against them. As Coyne notes, “this is natural selection, pure and simple.”

Biogeography provides some of the strongest evidence for evolution and Coyne notes that it is territory intelligent designers do not even venture into. It is one of the things that got Darwin thinking about evolution in the first place as he noticed that birds on neighboring islands were related but not precisely the same species — a scenario that fits neatly with the idea that they had evolved their different traits in isolation from one another.

Most oceanic islands for example show a similar pattern that evolution eloquently explains but does not make much sense if one is an intelligent designer: they often have an abundance of endemic birds, insects and plants but lack mammals, amphibians and perhaps most tellingly of all freshwater fish. The reasons are clear: such islands arose bereft of life from the sea floor and the animals and plants that made it to them would be mobile (birds and insects fly and the former often have plant seeds in their droppings). Evidence for evolution on them can be seen in the fact that many of the bird species which inhabit them are flightless (flying takes up energy and is not needed if there are no local predators). Freshwater fish don’t show up because they can’t swim in the ocean to get there.

This is just the tip of Coyne’s iceberg and his book has many more examples. (Why can some people still wiggle their ears? Because it seems to be a remnant from when our ancestors needed to move their ears around to help them localize sounds). It is one of many books that will appear this year to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” as well as his 200th birthday. It will certainly raise a few eyebrows in certain circles — and I wonder now if our ability to do so doesn’t have some unknown roots?

The State Board of Education in Texas voted on Friday to remove a long-time science curriculum rule that required “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories be covered in the classroom.

It also struck down two proposed sections that would have required students in high school biology classes to study the “sufficiency or insufficiency” of common ancestry and natural selection of species.

But it settled on a compromise that will require teachers to discuss “all sides” of scientific theories with their students. This may allow both sides to claim a victory of sorts.

Evolution proponents were especially alarmed by the “strengths and weaknesses” clause because it implied a “weakness” where few scientists say one exists. But some biblical critics of evolution will no doubt be happy by the “all sides” provision. 

The old ”strengths and weaknesses” wording was regarded by many as an attempt by social and religious conservatives to raise questions about Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which is popularly known as his theory of evolution.

Some of the supporters of the “strengths and weaknesses rule” said  they just wanted open discussion and accused the evolutionists of trying to stifle debate.

Critics contended that maintaining the rule would have given Biblical creationists or proponents of “intelligent design” theory an open door to get their anti-evolution agenda into the classroom.

Some fear the new “all sides” rule will still allow this to happen.

“The word ‘weaknesses’ no longer appears in the science standards. But the document still has plenty of potential footholds for creationist attacks on evolution to make their way into Texas classrooms,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group that has long been at odds with religious conservatives on a range of issues.

The Dallas Morning News urged the board to vote out the “strength and weaknesses” rule in an editorial on Thursday under the headline “No Doubt About Science.”

“Even many people of faith accept the theory of evolution,” it noted.

For the most part, the two sides are light years apart. Many creationists believe the planet is a few thousand years old. The scientific consensus is closer to 4.5 billion years.

Intelligent design theory holds that the complexity of life would not have been possible without a designer. (And that designer would be God).

The vast majority of scientists accept evolution at least in its broad outlines, and the theory of natural selection (once again, to use the term favored by Darwin himself) is the foundation of modern biology.

Scientists point to an abundance of evidence to support the notion that species evolve. These include the species divergence found between islands, even those close apart (this was the clue that got Darwin thinking); the fossil record (no mammals in those Precambrian rocks); DNA testing (the great apes are indeed our closest living relatives).

But what do you think? Is it not right to let students look at all sides of scientific issues, provided that they stick to science? Or does this open the door to a religious agenda that may not be ground in science?

(Photo: The skeleton of an Ophtalmosaurus sea reptile on display at the Christie’s auction house in Paris February 12, 2009.  REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes (FRANCE)

The start of a high-powered Vatican-sponsored acadmeic conference on evolution was anything but fossilized.

The third STOQ International Conference, called Biological Evolution, Facts and Theories, began on Tuesday at the Pontifical Gregorian University (picture right) under the patronage of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture.

The conference, which has been organised together with the University of Notre Dame to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, had barely gotten underway when charges of censorship and undemocratic and unacademic behaviour began flying.

At the end of the first session Oktar Babuna, a Turkish doctor and collaborator of prominent Turkish anti-Darwin campaigner Harun Yahya,asked for the floor to put forward a question. Babuna, a proponent of the Islamic creationist campaign against evolution, spoke about his view that there were insufficient transitional forms from species to species to support the theory of evolution.

After he began speaking two professors on the dias, Francisco J. Ayala of the University of California at Irvine and Douglas Futuyma of the State University of New York were visibly irritated. Someone in the hall can be heard saying “turn the microphone off” and seconds later two organisers approached Babuna. One of them abruptly took the microphone away from Babuna and another ordered him to go back to his seat. Watch it all here

“After I walked back to my seat someone said “only evolutionists can ask questions,” Babuna told Reuters afterwards. “This is very anti-democratic and very unacademic. If this is a scientific meeting … if you have scientific questions to ask, they should be responded to scientifically, everybody accepts that … if you force people to shut up and don’t let them ask any question … then it is not a scientific theory but an ideology.” The spat was filmed by Babuna’s associate Dr Cihat Gundogdu, who put an edited version on the Harun Yahya website.

Both men attended the conference with English and Italian versions of Harun Yahya’s super-slick mega-book Atlas of Creation (picture left) in hand. We have done numerous blogs on Islamic creationism, its proponents and its opponents. Some of the links are listed below. But what do you think about the debate and, more importantly, do you think officials at the Gregorian University were right or wrong to yank the microphone from Babuna at a scientific conference?

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/05/just-before-darwin-day-pew-reviews-faith-and-evolution-in-us/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/12/24/a-one-stop-shop-for-the-latest-on-islamic-creationism/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/11/25/harun-yahya-dangles-big-prizes-for-creationism-essays/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/27/richard-dawkins-rips-into-harun-yahya-and-muslim-creationism/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/06/19/harun-yahya-preaches-islam-slams-darwin-and-awaits-jesus/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/04/07/harun-yahyas-islamic-creationist-book-pops-up-in-scotland/

Social and religious conservatives in Texas suffered a setback on Thursday when the State Board of Education narrowly voted to ditch a requirement that high school science teachers cover the “strengths and weaknesses” of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which is more popularly known as the theory of evolution.

A final vote on the entire science curriculum is expected today. You can see reports here and here.

The rule to teach “both sides of the evolution debate” had been in place since the 1980s, but national interest has been rekindled in recent years by attempts to get Biblical creationism taught in U.S. schools in one form of another.

Proponents of intelligent design — which holds that life is so complex that it must have had an ultimate creator — have suffered a number of setbacks.

Some in the pro-evolution crowd — which includes just about all of the mainstream science community in the United States — contend that introducing “flaws” or ”criticism” of the theory of natural selection is a smokescreen for creationists who can claim that just discussing “doubt” does not in itself signal the promotion of a religious agenda.

Many in the scientific community say there is little doubt on this score or at least the kind of doubt suggested by the proponents of creationism and intelligent design.

The Dallas Morning News on Thursday quoted Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, as saying that: “There are no weaknesses in the theory of evolution.”

What do you think? Is the Texas school board living up to President Barack Obama’s pledge this week “to restore science to its rightful place?”

(Photo: The new Charles Darwin postage stamp, issued by Britian’s Royal Mail to commemorate his 200th birthday this year and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work. REUTERS/Royal Mail, 29 Dec 2008)

The Church of England has just issued an apology to Charles Darwin for opposing his theory of evolution when The Origin of Species first came out 150 years ago. The Roman Catholic Church says it sees no need to say “sorry” for its initial hostility to the same theory. But both are now reconciled to evolution as solid science and are getting active in presenting their view that it is not incompatible with Christian faith. Is one approach better than the other to get this message across?

Next year’s double anniversary — the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species — is one reason to speak up about evolution. Another is the fact that evolution has become an increasingly controversial public issue, especially in the United States, and the debate is dominated by mostly conservative Protestant creationists and “intelligent design” supporters on one side and agnostic/atheistic scientists on the other.

That debate is so entangled in U.S. politics — the latest chapter being the questions about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s views on teaching creationism in schools — that a less polarised view has a hard time getting heard. Trying to walk a middle path can be a tricky business, too, as Rev Michael Reiss in Britain has learned. A biologist and Anglican priest, he has just had to resign as the Royal Society’s director of education after causing an uproar among scientists by saying creationism could be discussed as a “world view” in science class. He wasn’t advocating it, but thought that simply telling students with creationist views that they were wrong would turn them off science completely.

So what’s the best way for anyone who wants to get a word in edgewise? Apologies to a man long dead? Arguments that may not be heard? Something else?

One reason for the different approaches may be that the churches are responding to  different poles of this debate. The Church of England seems more concerned about arguments from the “new atheists” such as Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins. The Vatican seems to be thinking more about creationists and “intelligent design” supporters.

On a new website the Church of England has devoted to Darwin, Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, its director of mission and public affairs, declared that “good religion needs good science”. The CoE opposed evolution back then, he said, but it was, after all, “not such an earth-shattering idea”. He continued:

Darwin’s immense achievement was to develop a big theory which went a long way to explaining aspects of the world around us. But to treat it as an all-embracing theory of everything is to travesty Darwin’s work. The difficulty is that his theory of natural selection has been so effective within the scientific community, and so easily understood in outline by everybody, that it has been inflated into a general theory of everything – which is not only erroneous but dangerous.”

After explaining the current Anglican view, Brown added: “Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.”

The Vatican started off with theology on Tuesday as it announced a conference next March on evolution with  scientists, theologians and philosophers. “I would like to repeat from the outset … that there is no incompatibility between the theory of evolution and the message of the Bible and with theology,” Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s culture minister, told journalists in Rome.

Asked about the Anglican apology, he said: “Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session … Darwin was never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned … The attitude of the Anglican Church is curious and significant, the style belongs to a mentality a bit different from ours.” 

Professor Phillip Sloan of Notre Dame University, which will co-host the conference with the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, put the issue in wider context. “In the United States, and now elsewhere, we have an on-going public debate over evolution that has social, political and religious dimensions. Most of this debate has been taking place without a strong Catholic theological presence, and the discussion has suffered accordingly.”

Rev Marc Leclerc, a Jesuit philosophy professor at the Gregorian, said Darwin’s work was more often discussed ideologically than scientifically, which has led to a stand-off between what he called evolutionism and creationism. The “intelligent design” argument had added to the confusion by saying only divine planning could explain evolution, he said. That amounted to confusing divine purpose and a mechanism, “whereas these are obviously two distinct planes”.

The Vatican famously “thinks in centuries”. It’s useful to remember that when reading the announcement from its Pontifical Council for Culture about a conference it plans to hold in Rome on Darwin and evolution. Pope Benedict has shown a keen interest in the issue and debated it in a closed session with some former doctoral students in 2006. The Vatican now wants to hold a week-long public conference next March entitled “Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories — A Critical Evaluation 150 years after the The Origin of Species“.

The announcement (translated from the original and more florid Italian) said: “150 years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is difficult to find a scientific sphere entirely free from direct or indirect influences of the theory of evolution. Especially in recent decades, this theory has experienced so many changes, and such significant changes, that a critical reflection is very urgent. Moreover, there are obvious philosophical and theological problems raised by the theory of evolution that cause many emotional and even ideological reactions.”

The conference from March 3 to 7 will be organised by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the University of Notre Dame in the United States, as part of a wider project called STOQ (Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest). It will be attended, the announcement declared with a flourish, by “luminaries of science and famous philosophers and theologians”.

Some defenders of “intelligent design” might try to claim that this signals a Vatican rethink on evolution. Caveat emptor! After initially fighting Darwin, the Roman Catholic Church accepted evolution as a scientific theory while rejecting any materialist conclusion Darwinists might draw from it to reject the religious belief in God as the creator of the universe. This puts Catholic teaching somewhere between the (often agnostic) Darwinists and the (often evangelical Protestant) anti-Darwinists.

Before concluding that the Vatican is shifting position, consider an interesting fact. The liberal Swiss theologian Hans Küng disagrees with some Church doctrines so much that he has been barred from teaching as a Catholic theologian since 1979. But he and Benedict agree on this issue (as he showed in his 2006 book Der Anfang aller Dinge — The Beginning of All Things — pictured right). In fact, as Küng told me after his meeting with Benedict in 2005, the pope urged him to speak out more frequently in public about the Catholic position on evolution.

An English translation of Pope Benedict’s 2006 discussion of evolution with his former students has finally come out and I recommend it to anyone who’s confused about where the Roman Catholic Church stands on this issue. It’s called Creation and Evolution and is publised by Ignatius Press in the U.S. The discussion was held in German and the original text, Schöpfung und Evolution, appeared in April 2007.

I mention the confusion about this issue because a 2005 New York Times op-ed piece by Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schönborn prompted supporters of “intelligent design” (ID) to think the Church was embracing their argument. He denied that to me in an interview a few months later. So when it became known that Benedict would discuss evolution with his former doctoral students — his so-called Schülerkreis — at Castel Gandolfo in September 2006, there was considerable interest in what he would say.

The German publisher, Sankt Ulrich Verlag in Augsburg, sent me a PDF version of the book in German under embargo, so I wrote a news story the day it appeared. In the book, Benedict said science was too narrow to explain creation, which was not random as Darwinists insist, but has a rationality that goes back to God. He argued this on philosophical and theological grounds, not on the faith arguments that creationists use (”the Bible says so”) or the biology-based examples that ID prefers to argue that some life forms are too complex to have evolved.

This is classic Catholic teaching and it’s called theistic evolution. Benedict is not alone in advocating it either — it is accepted by most mainline Protestant churches as well. Francis Collins, the U.S. geneticist who will soon step down as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, advocated this view in his 2006 book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Sam Harris, the best-selling neo-atheist author of The End of Faith, predictably trashed it in a scathing review. But it did have a seven-week run on the New York Times bestseller list, which must mean it speaks to quite a few people.

My news story prompted one of the oddest reviews I’ve ever had to anything I’ve ever written. The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the leading advocate of the intelligent design view, put the headline “Pap about the Pope” on its post and claimed the seminar entitled “Creation and Evolution” was actually about philosophy (despite all the scientists who spoke there). Their reviewer, Jay Richards, started off his comment on the report by announcing “I suspect there’s a translation problem here.” He then noted that Benedict had challenged scientism and called for a broader concept of reason than the strictly empirical view science uses. “That’s easy for classically informed philosophers to understand,” he wrote. “But you can be sure that exactly 0% of reporters and 1% of readers will understand that. What every reporter will take away is that all this talk about God, purpose, and design are private, since in modern parlance, only ‘science’ constitutes public knowledge.”

Hmmm… First, he claims to find translation problems even though he hasn’t seen the original and may not even understand it. Then he writes off all reporters and almost all readers as dimwits who can’t understand what he can. He then proceeds to twist the argument around so fully that he ends up saying the takeaway from all this is that the debate belongs to some realm “along with fairies and the Easter bunny.”

This intrigued me so much that I emailed him to ask for chapter and verse on where the mistranslations could be found and which improved translations he would suggest. Of course, he had none because he hadn’t read the book. I’m not sure he could even read the book, but that didn’t stop him from telling his readers he suspected some mistranslations. When challenged, he launched into an elaborate deconstruction of the word “translate” that basically concluded that a mere reporter could not explain Benedict’s views to an average reader. In the end, it was clear the purpose of the exercise was to cast as much doubt as possible on a report he didn’t agree with. In other words, shoot the messenger.

This theistic evolution view clearly rattles the ID camp. One of its main supporters, William Dembski, fired off a broadside last week in a post entitled Theistic Evolutionists Close Ranks — Let the Bloodletting Begin! Unlike Richards, Dembski didn’t mince words: “So here’s the deal, everyone. Theistic evolutionists are implacably opposed to ID … They are happy to jump in bed with Richard Dawkins if it means defeating ID. They are on the wrong side of the culture war. And they need to be defeated.” Science and Religion, a blog that widens the debate by also looking at the Islamic world, commented: “William Dembski has gone ballistic.”

Dembski at least writes clearly here, you have to say that. But I wonder about his conclusions too. If theistic evolutionists are as he says, that means that Pope Benedict would be ready to join forces with the man who wrote the bestseller pictured at left. This is as curious a conclusion as the one Richards drew. Creation and Evolution is now out — and in a fine translation by Michael J. Miller that improves the style but does not contradict the content of my quotes — so English speakers can now read it and judge for themselves.

The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) has just published a booklet for school teachers urging them not to advocate creationism or intelligent design (ID). That’s “evangelical” as in the German evangelisch (meaning Protestant, mostly Lutheran), and not “evangelical” as it’s more commonly used in the United States. Still, it’s interesting to see that the EKD in Germany, where there are few U.S.-style evangelicals and almost no dispute about the theory of evolution, felt it necessary to issue a 22-page booklet about teaching evolution. It’s called “The Origin of the World, the Theory of Evolution and the Belief in Creation in School” (here in German).

EKD Chairman Bishop Wolfgang Huber (pictured below) writes in the introduction that there is “an intense debate” about these issues but that “it is being conducted in Germany in a different way from, for example, the United States of America. Still, a fundamental clarification is of considerable practical importance.” He doesn’t elaborate.

The daily Die Welt gave a bit more background. “This dispute is increasingly spilling over from the USA to us and has already led to political debates. The Hesse state culture minister (and Protestant synod member) Karin Wolff spoke last year of a “surprising agreement” between evolution and the Bible. With that she sparked a dispute within the Church in which the reasonable faction of the EKD found itself confronted with the growing strength of evangelicals loyal to the Bible. This “orientation aid” should now calm the dispute by setting limits towards both sides.”The “orientation aid,” as the booklet is called, criticises Richard Dawkins and other atheists for thinking science can disprove the existence of God. It compares the books of the “new atheists” to the communist textbooks in East Germany: “The new atheism propagated by Dawkins and others today fits seamlessly into this ideological scheme.”

The booklet has several pages on the relationship between science and religion. Sorry, I can’t translate them all but they boil down to saying that biblically literal creationism is unseriös (”unserious” is a serious put-down in German). ID turns God into a god-of-the-gaps, it adds. So how does the EKD want German schools to deal with creation? Unlike in the U.S., even state schools in Germany have religion classes, separated according to religions and denominations. The EKD says it believes the Biblical story of creation explains the overall purpose of life while science explains the physical details. “God the creator is part of this belief, but not creationism,” the booklet writes. “So Protestant religion class can discuss creationism, but not advocate it.”

The booklet talks positively about “cooperation that connects subjects” (fächerverbindende Kooperation) and says “in principle all classes can deal with both the belief in creation and the theory of evolution.” Religion class is special in that it can advocate a religious view such as God as creator. “But teachers, because of their pedological responsibility and the duty to be evenhanded that goes with their occupation, cannot claim a comparable right for themselves, neither about creationism nor other views, for example atheist ones,” it adds.