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April 20, 2005

Leveraging the New Pope to Advance Intelligent Design Creationism

Those you who read these rambles regularly know that I think PZ Myers at Pharyngula has about the best blog on the web. However, I think he may have gone a little beyond the evidence today. He has a very a strong worry that Pope Benedict the Inquisitionor favors ID creationism over the more recent Catholic position that evolution and science isn't incompatible with Christian belief. In his worry, PZ agrees, perhaps for the first and only time, with Dembski's interpretation of the following from Benedict:

It is the affair of the natural sciences to explain how the tree of life in particular continues to grow and how new branches shoot out from it. This is not a matter for faith. But we must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error…(They) point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed.

Of course, one can see why Demdski loved it. And in many ways it concerns me but I think several of those who left comments regarding PZ's post had it right,

Oh, come off it, PZ: You and I may know that there's no guiding intelligence behind evolution, but you can hardly expect the Pope to say that, even if he believed it.

The best we freethinkers can hope for is for him to acknowledge, as John Paul II did, that Darwinian evolution isn't incompatible with Christian belief. If God wants to step in late in the process and inject a nonphysical element -- a "soul" -- fine. We don't see it, and we needn't try to account for it; it's his problem. [theophylact]

The remark by Benedict the Inquisitionor is strange and disconnected. So it provided an opportunity for Demdski to jump all over it, which he did. The timing of his reaction is amazing and it shows that creationists will take every opportunity to leverage whatever news is in the headlines to their advantage. Demdski's remarks, if widely disseminated, give additional legs to ID creationism's public relations campaign.

On the other hand, I haven't heard a single scientist or organization of scientists take the opportunity of the election of a new Pope to remind the world of the ongoing Catholic position that "evolution isn't incompatible with Christian belief."

Check out the thoughts of Jason Lynch at Stranger Fruit who provides an interesting commentary of the issue of the Pope, Demdski and Bush

Posted by DuaneSmith at April 20, 2005 12:24 PM | Read more on Evolution |

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» Ratzinger and Creation from Tractatus Bloggius
PZ is concerned that Ratzinger could be a big help for IDC. Perhaps. I don't think Ratzinger has really been too interested in ID, but he has made the occasional hat tip with regards to creation. Stranger Fruit has some comments on this, as does Agylen... [Read More]

Tracked on April 24, 2005 12:13 PM

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