The Vatican on Intelligent Design: No Thank You

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."

His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" — whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism — a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation — camouflaged in scientific language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.

There's alot of competing interests in the ID Story- there's the science community attempting to defend scientific theory and practice; the protestant religious community attempting to interject in the social/cultural "wars" against liberalism's various influences [including homosexual marriage, abortion issues, etc.]; the conservative political movement who simply uses and abuses the cultural movement for reinforcement of their political power. Now the Vatican weighs in- really not on either side of the issue. They're just as interested in making sure that the cultural conservatives of America do not dictate theocratic thinking globally- that's their arena. But an interesting intervention that people should heed. Fact is, there IS no place in the science classroom for ID, and that those parties trying to put it in there aren't really fighting for ID, per se, but are fighting for a variety of other conservative, controlling social measures.