THREE prominent US scientists have asked the new pope, Benedict XVI, to clarify the Roman Catholic church鈥檚 views on evolution, and to reject a piece in The New York Times last week by Austrian cardinal Christoph Sch枚nborn, a close associate of Benedict, which said that the church does not accept 鈥渘eo-Darwinian dogma鈥�.
A 1996 statement by the late Pope John Paul II seemed finally to mark the church鈥檚 acceptance of evolution. But while common ancestry for life 鈥渕ight be true鈥�, Sch枚nborn wrote, 鈥渁n unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection is not鈥�. Denial of the 鈥渙verwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science鈥�, he added. Most biologists would question that such evidence exists.
鈥淒enial of the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science鈥�
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The cardinal鈥檚 language is highly reminiscent of intelligent design activists in the US, with whom he has links. Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, and prominent Catholic evolutionists Francisco Ayala of the University of California at Irvine and Kenneth Miller of Brown University in Rhode Island have asked Benedict not 鈥渢o build a new divide, long ago eradicated, between the scientific method and religious belief鈥�.
