Sense from the Vatican

Nice to see the Vatican's chief astronomer, the Rev. George Coyne commenting that intelligent design "isn't science, even though it pretends to be."

I don't even have a problem with Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn stating

it should not be seen as "an offense to Darwin's dignity" for people to offer criticisms of evolutionary theory. "The theory of evolution is a scientific theory," he said. "What I call evolutionism is an ideological view that says evolution can explain everything in the whole development of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."

I'd agree that "evolutionism" exists - though I'd call it an attitude, rather than an ideology - and that as such it's not a scientific theory. In fact, as a card-carrying evolutionist this is just the kind of well-adapted analysis that I would hope for from such a highly-evolved religion as my former Church.