c. 2005 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ FedEx phoned Lawrence Krauss’ cluttered office in the physics department at Case Western Reserve University.

This package he was sending abroad, a dispatcher asked, could he give a more complete address?

The package held a letter Krauss had addressed to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, 00120 Vatican City.

The dispatcher wanted Mr. Benedict’s street number.

Thus did FedEx provide a moment of comic relief in a dispute over the question: How did life on Earth come to be as it is?

The July 13 letter written by Krauss and two other scientists stressed their hope that the Roman Catholic Church would not “build a new divide, long ago eradicated, between the scientific method and religious belief” and asked the pope to clarify the church’s position on evolution.

Co-signing the letter with Krauss, a best-selling popular science author who is Jewish, were two renowned Catholic biologists, Kenneth Miller of Brown University and Francisco Ayala of the University of California, Irvine.

They are among a faction of scientists who feel that any redefinition of evolution along the lines of a recent article by an influential cardinal could have grave implications. Especially in America. Especially now.

They say the United States has a special sensitivity to religion-vs.-science issues, as some citizens and groups have sought to open classrooms to additional models for how life came to be as it is.

Evolution science, developed through empirical methods since the mid-19th century when Charles Darwin published the bones of his biological breakthrough, holds that life arose, changed and became more complex through natural processes, including random changes and natural selection. Science educators have taught and fleshed it out for decades.

Other models include creationism (belief that a supernatural force conjured the world as it is today) and intelligent design, which posits that a kind of evolution operates, but a “designer,” or god, intricately controls every change.

Whatever their advocates say, intelligent design and creationism are religion, Krauss argues, and only the Darwinian approach deserves attention in science classes. “I’m fine with religion in religion classes,” he says, “not in science.”

To scientists, the difference between empirical and creationist and design models is that systematic observers can test any aspect of the former and use its theoretical basis to create new knowledge.

Anti-evolutionists often say belief in Darwinism “is tantamount to atheism,” says Robert Pennock, who teaches philosophy of science at Michigan State University.

“That’s not a fair characterization,” says Pennock, author of “Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism.” “Evolution is no more atheistic than physics or chemistry.”

In 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed there was no opposition between evolution and Catholic doctrine. In 1996, Pope John Paul II endorsed Pius’ statement.

The reason some scientists want Benedict, the current pope, to clarify the church’s position is that they sensed a shift July 7 when The New York Times published an opinion column by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna. In it, Schonborn wrote: “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense _ an unguided, unplanned process … is not.”

The Times identified the cardinal as a theologian “close to Pope Benedict XVI” and reported that his article was a response to an earlier Times essay by Krauss.

In that commentary, Krauss had written: “The Catholic Church can confidently believe that God created humans, and at the same time accept overwhelming scientific evidence in favor of common evolutionary ancestry of life.”

To some, Schonborn’s reference to intelligent design went off like a bomb. In their letter to the pope, Krauss, Miller and Ayala praised the church for having embraced the scientific explanation of life’s development but warned him of efforts “to dangerously redefine the church’s view of evolution.”

But biochemist Michael Behe takes a different view.

“Evolution no longer looks like a random process to me; it looks like a set-up job,” says Behe, a professor at Lehigh University who is active in the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a group that supports teaching of intelligent design. “My sense is that we’ll discover the means to detect the design scientifically.”

Behe, a Catholic, said he’s grateful Schonborn raised the matter so prominently.

Krauss says a battle between science and religion over the origin of species would be the most important such conflict since the 1600s, when the church aimed its Inquisition at Galileo for reporting that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe.

But Phillip Sloan says that’s way too grand an analogy. “This statement, coming from a cardinal, has no doctrinal basis,” says Sloan, a philosopher of science and history at Notre Dame University.

Still, Sloan recognizes the statement created a buzz worldwide, especially in the United States. It is political debate, he says, that drives the issue in America, where more than 30 states have either passed or are considering legislation permitting the teaching of intelligent design in science classes.

For his part, says Sloan, a Catholic teaching at a pre-eminent Catholic university, “It’s not the business of theology to dictate the business of science.”

The struggle to understand what seems unknowable “is something I love,” says Krauss. But his current preoccupation is “to face up to the continuing attacks on science.”

What advocates for intelligent design are talking about is not science but “metaphysical and religious interpretations,” he says. “If the church doesn’t acknowledge that, the only conclusion is for them to censor science, restrict it. That’s wrong.

“If there’s a conflict, and we don’t quell it,” he says, “it’s a disaster for both science and Catholicism.”

Eventually, FedEx got the letter to the Vatican. By then, the scientist had jetted to Colorado, New York and Singapore for conferences and meetings _ but had yet to get a reply from the pope.

MO RB END BENTAYOU

(Frank Bentayou is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)