Science is no religion and religion is no science.

On this beautiful Sunday, the Lord’s Day, I find it quite appropriate to tackle again the controversial issue of Evolution and ‘Intelligent design’ as it has been in all over the news in recent months and days. I am myself a Christian (of the Protestant Kind) but being European I hold rather liberal views both in politics ad theology. I also tend to have the greatest respect for the scientific world and happen to know quite a few – especially in the science of maths.

First it is important to say that the Evolution/Creation debate is strictly an American issue and for most Westerners in the world today that very fact seems to indicate that the States is the only country that has not taken the Enlightenment seriously – and this is a moderate way of putting it.

Second, I find it interesting to read in Courrier International that this recent issue of the scientific magazine Nature has created great controversy and has resulted in a great number of mails including furious scientists.

Above is the cover of the April 28, 2005 issue of Nature.

Is the cover 'sticker' a taste of the future? Few scientists have any time for the concept of intelligent design. Its thesis is that scientific knowledge cannot explain the natural world fully, and never will. Biological systems are too complex, gaps in the fossil record too large and interspecies differences too great to be explained by natural selection alone. Based on those perceptions, proponents of intelligent design argue that an intelligent creator must be directing life on Earth. OK as theology, but not as science. Yet intelligent design is catching on among students on US university campuses, and some academics offer courses on the subject. Is the presence of intelligent design in universities legitimizing the movement? And what should scientists do about it? Geoff Brumfiel reports from the ideological front line.

The question is not so much, I think, about whether the debate should be addressed by professors in American Colleges but whether it should be taught in science or in philosophy or religion.

I m no scientific myself but it seems pretty clear to me that the greatest danger here is to confuse religion, philosophy and science. These are very different fields. There needs not be a war between science and religion precisely because they do not deal with the same question. They may sometimes overlap at best but the very nature of faith makes it foreign to science.
I find it amazing, that Salvador Cordova, one of the main advocates of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) club can say this:

"If I could prove even one small part of my faith through purely scientific methods that would be highly satisfying intellectually,".

It is as if he wanted to prove God’s very existence scientifically. Cordova’s quest is intellectually incoherent- even idiotic and extremely arrogant. It shows a great state of confusion – if not a lack of faith.

On the other hand, some Darwinists have also used their cause to go a step too far and try to ‘debunk’ religion. This is nothing new, and Charles Darwin’s theories were used in the 19^th century and early 20^th century to justify a social view based on the "survival of the fittest." also known as ‘social Darwinism’. And this has been going on even recently:

Popular contemporary biologists like Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins have also exacerbated the divisions between evolutionists and creationists by directly challenging the validity of religious belief - Dawkins by repeatedly declaring his atheism (''faith,'' he once wrote, ''is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate''), and Wilson by describing his ''search for objective reality'' as a replacement for religious seeking.

In a recent book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University and a staunch supporter of evolution, says that many scientists have hurt their cause by “habitually stepping outside the bounds of science into social theory”.

I think Ruse is also totally on target when he says that :

that many religious believers who currently reject or remain indifferent to Darwin can come to accept it - as long as they are presented strictly with scientific facts, and given less reason to think evolution could be a threat to their social and spiritual values.

It is the case in Europe and the rest of the world - science is strictly taught as science - and this is why it is not an issue outside America. The danger of missing the point that religion and science have no business with each other may result in the teaching of Creation (or ‘Intelligent Design’) as an ‘alternative science’ and if Bush gets one or two more Supreme Court Justices, they may overturn the 1987 decision to forbid the teaching of creationism in schools and Intelligent Design may be in the classroom fairly quickly.