Bruce Chapman

In Monday’s New York Times (“Believing Scriptures but Playing by Science’s Rules”), Cornelia Dean joins Eugenie Scott of the Darwin lobby NCSE (National Center for Science Education) in raising the tantalizing thought that (as “some say”) maybe scientists who have earned legitimate doctorates in scientific fields, but are known to hold private views that question Darwinism, should be denied their professional degrees. Take that in: Perhaps doctoral candidates whose personal views deviate from an ideological party line should be punished professionally. Presumably, if they are in a later stage in their career, you can thwart their application for tenure; or later still, a promotion to full professor.

It was gratifying to read the AP account of Cardinal Schoenborn’s lecture in New York last night and to note the way that His Eminence once again set the media and others straight on the position of the Catholic Church. It won’t make any difference to the Darwinists, of course, because, depending on their audience, they hold either that the Church has accepted Darwinism or that the Catholic Church is just an enemy of reason. Don’t confuse Darwinists with evidence on anything.

Thanks to an informed and irenic Turkish blog that I follow (thewhitepath.com), I already knew much of material covered in a Reuters story on Turks’ dislike of Darwinism. But it probably is news to many in this country, including the media. The Darwinists’ propaganda trope is that six-day creationism is the same as intelligent design, or might as well be the same. Yet it is obvious that Turkey really is primarily creationist — following a literalist reading of the Quaran rather than the Bible, of course — and that the creationists in Turkey have substantial funding, while ID has virtually none

We notice a trend on the left to denounce scientists who disagree with a social policy objective of the left as “anti-science.” It’s a major theme on the evolution issue. Now it is true, too, on the issue of whether global warming is as big a danger as the Al Gore sorts say and what contribution human activity makes to the problem. And as a Washington Post article shows, the materialist left have decided that medical professors who promote reproductive medicine that doesn’t include abortion or test tube fertilization because of moral scruples are being denounced as “anti-science,” too.

Almost lost by the MSM are two new statements by Pope Benedict XVI that speak of intelligent design, in contrast to (Darwinian) evolution. First was a homily in Regensburg that was eclipsed in the news by the other, more famous address there that mentioned Islam. The second statement was made only a few days ago in Verona, as covered by the Vatican Information Service (VIS). As someone familiar with A Meaningful World (IVP Academic, 2006) by Discovery senior fellows Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt, I am amazed at how closely Pope Benedict’s statements about science and rationality resemble the arguments by Wiker and Witt. The pope’s recent address to the Italian Ecclesial Congress sounds like it came right out of chapter 4, “The Geometry of Genius.” Here’s an excerpt from Benedict (translated from the Italian by VIS):

The whole point of independent schools is that they are supposed to be independent! The whole point of the media is to report the news, not distortions. Yet in the story from The Ottawa Citzen (“Teach sex and evolution or close, Quebec evangelical schools told“), we discover by reading the whole story carefully that the schools under attack do teach evolution. They also teach the scientific evidence against it and they teach intelligent design. And that additional teaching is the state’s real beef.

* The estimable cultural commentator Joseph Epstein writes in The Wall Street Journal Thursday about those “Ugly Thorny Things” called facts that have a way of undercutting “velvety and suave” things called ideas. The piece (by subscription only here) makes a fascinating observation about the way that big ideas decay in the presence of factual reality.

“Not only have the past 50 or so years been largely bereft of grand ideas, but much of the best intellectual work of the period has been devoted to eliminating the major ideas, or idea system, of the previous 100 years or so: notably Marxism and Freudianism, with Darwinism perhaps next to tumble.”

I keep getting asked about the scientific research projects underway that relate to Darwinism and intelligent design. So why aren’t we talking more about them publicly? For several good reasons:

The most important is that the Darwinist establishment would like nothing better than to “out” research programs before they are finished. The idea is to shut down damaging evidence as early as possible. Strangle the infant in the crib. Demand answers now to questions still being explored.

Toady’s story about the Pope’s latest remarks on evolution is very positive. It is based on an appearance before a huge crowd of 300,000 in Regensburg, Germany. The Pope also gave a scholarly address at the University there on Christianity and hellenism that makes some interesting philosophical points that bear further study.

Ian Fisher of the New York Times Rome bureau had a valuable Saturday story on the discussion at Castel Gandolfo between Pope Benedict XVI and his former theology students (“Professor-Turned-Pope Leads a Seminar on Evolution”). He does err in his description of intelligent design (“life is so complex it requires an active creator”–where do they get these lines?), but he is right, I think, in balancing two probable facets of the Pope’s own thinking: 1) that the problem is not so much evolution, as the way it is applied; and 2) there may really be problems with the science of evolution.