VATICAN CITY (CNS): Intelligent design is not science and should not be taught as a scientific theory in schools alongside Darwinian evolution, an article in the Vatican newspaper said.
The article said that in pushing intelligent design some groups were improperly seeking miraculous explanations in a way that creates confusion between religious and scientific fields.
At the same time, scientists should recognise that evolutionary theory does not exclude an overall purpose in creation – a “superior design” that may be realised through secondary causes like natural selection, it said.
The article, published in the January 17 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, was written by Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna in Italy.
It noted that the debate over intelligent design – the idea that certain features of life and the universe are best explained by an intelligent designer rather than adaptive evolution – has spread from the United States to Europe.
The article said that, unfortunately, what has helped fuel the intelligent design debate is a tendency among some Darwinian scientists to view evolution in absolute and ideological terms, as if everything – including first causes – can be attributed to chance.
From the Church’s point of view, Catholic teaching says God created all things from nothing, but doesn’t say how, the article said.
That leaves open the possibilities of evolutionary mechanisms like random mutation and natural selection.
