Bruce Chapman

We are not alone in observing the sand wash out from under the Darwinists’ feet. The estimable editors of First Things have given readers a fine Christmas present in their December number.

Within is an essay by CSC senior fellow Michael Behe on “Scientific Orthodoxies”, and another by senior fellow Wesley J. Smith–in a book review–meditating on John Brown. And there’s a wonderful piece by Richard John Neuhaus mediating on a whole parade of related issues that we care about (such as Leon Kass’ principled leadership on the President’s Council on Bioethics), and, yes, evolution.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Austria discomfited Darwinists last July when he published an article in the New York Times taking them to task for claims the Church backs Darwin’s theory of evolution. Now on his website, his staff points out that some in “the English-speaking press” misreported a lecture two weeks ago in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral as “somehow drawing back from his essay in the New York Times.”

Annotation: It has come to our attention that the content of Cardinal Schönborn‘s first catechesis has been mis-reported in the English-speaking press as somehow drawing back from his essay in The New York Times. This is inaccurate, as will be apparent from the full text. In order to clear up this misunderstanding, we are posting here an initial draft of an English translation. (Official and final German and English versions will follow when the lectures are compiled into book form.)

Dr. Jerry Coyne’s flimsy and coarse demolition of what in fact is a straw man version of intelligent design would not warrant response if The New Republic had not promoted it as a cover story recently. We asked TNR’s editors if they would like an article in rebuttal, but the editors apparently thought such would not be needed.

I see that a couple of fascinating new websites have “evolved” on the Internet (and if you think sites really do evolve, there are some web “designers” I’d like you to meet). For reporters and others who imagine that only the likes of Discovery Institute fellows believe that Darwin’s theory is in the process of imploding, go to the new Stephen J. Gould Initiative for Non-Darwinian Evolution site and its companion, Biological Self Organization: Evolution by Mechanical Causation.

There is much to read there. It’s a curiosity, to say the least.