Division in the ranks

The creationists and their faux-named "intelligent design" ilk, including their front group the Discovery Institute, were undoubtedly buoyed when Pope Benedict XVI - who I still think of by his previous moniker of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - claimed last week that

the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order;

i.e., was not consciously done for an intended purpose. This, it seems to me, is part of a deliberate campaign to undermine and reverse the Vatican's earlier position on evolution expressed in 1996 by John Paul II, who said it is "more than just a hypothesis." Back on July 7, Austrian Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn fired an earlier salvo in an op-ed in the New York Times in which he argued that

[e]volution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not.

He also called John Paul's statement "rather vague and unimportant."

In October, Schoenborn tried to finesse his statement, saying it was all a "misunderstanding." He even had praise for Darwin, calling The Origin of Species "one of the very great works of intellectual history" - but not, interestingly, a great work of science. He also said that

"I see no problem combining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, under one condition - that the limits of a scientific theory are respected. ...

"It is fully reasonable to assume some sense or design even if the scientific method demands restrictions that shut out this question," said the cardinal.

Or, to put it more bluntly, he can accept science as long as science allows him to continue to "assume" that "the things of the world" were consciously designed for some purpose, even if evolution was the means to the end chosen.

Interestingly, in that he comes close to a position I used to sarcastically suggest to creationists before they tried to dress up their assumptions in the language of science: "I can't imagine why," I used to say, "people who can conceive of a being who could create the entire universe in one fell swoop can't conceive of a being that could create evolution." Nevertheless, while Schoenborn did back off some, the central contention that evolution cannot be "an unguided, unplanned process" stands unretracted.

So it was good to be reminded that even in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, not everyone is looking for loopholes in science.

The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.

The Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples with oranges.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

Coyne, a devout Catholic,

reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.

He argued that God should be thought of more as "an encouraging parent," by which if I understand correctly, he envisions God as trying to advise us how to avoid screwing things up without actually making decisions.

This is apparently not the first time Coyne has held that so-called ID isn't science. It'll be interesting to see what follows now, since he has spoken again, this time right after the Pope's remarks. Benedict née Ratzinger is not a man to tolerate or forget dissent and the reaction to Coyne from the Vatican may tell us how serious the church hierarchy is about undoing its previous, even if hardly ringing, endorsement of evolution.