Vatican Paper Defends Evolution

The AP reports that on Tuesday, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano carried an article by Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna. The article described Darwin's theory of evolution, and said that in the scientific world, biological evolution "represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth." He wrote that intelligent design "doesn't belong to science and the pretext that it be taught as a scientific theory alongside Darwin's explanation is unjustified. It only creates confusion between the scientific and philosophical and religious planes." However, he concluded by saying, "in a vision that goes beyond the empirical horizon, we can say that we aren't men by chance or by necessity, and that the human experience has a sense and a direction signaled by a superior design." [Thanks to Joel Sogol via Religionlaw listserv for the information.]