The Show Place

A BONE OF CONTENTION
Evolution of a clash
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Frank Bentayou
Plain Dealer Reporter
FedEx phoned Lawrence Krauss at his cluttered physics de partment office at Case Western Reserve University.

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

The 51-year-old hyperkinetic professor, best-selling author and Shaker Heights resident stopped cold, stunned. That's a rare occurrence, he admitted.

The package held a letter he had drafted and 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 between two of the world's most visible institutions, science and the Catholic church.

The question at hand: How did life on Earth come to be as it is?

The July 13 letter Krauss, along with two other professors, wrote to the pope expressed gratitude that the church has embraced the scientific explanation of life's development, but warned of efforts "to dangerously redefine the church's view of evolution."

It also stressed the scientists' hope that the church "not build a new divide, long ago eradicated, between the scientific method and religious belief" and implored the pope to clarify the position on evolution and science.

Some scientists, including Krauss, think there's hardly been so pressing a conflict between the two world forces since the 1600s, when the church brought its wrath down on Galileo for reporting that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe.

Now the issue is the origin of species.

Co-signing the letter with Krauss, who's Jewish, were Francisco Ayala, of the University of California, Irvine, and Kenneth Miller, of Brown University, respected and outspoken biologists and practicing Catholics, Ayala ordained as a Dominican priest.

A faction of scientists feels that any redefinition of evolution, which they've seen recent signs of from an influential cardinal, could have grave implications. Especially in America. Especially in these times.

Others point out that a cardinal's op-ed essay hardly constitutes a doctrinal shift for the church. But they also note that this country has a special sensitivity to religion-vs.-science issues.

It's here, after all, where citizens and groups have sought to inject religious content into school science classes. Their hope: to open classrooms to additional models for how life came to be as it is. One would be that it arose, changed and became more complicated through natural processes, including random changes and natural selection.

Other models include creationism (that a supernatural force conjured up 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. The latter is the view that the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based organization, lays out and that the Intelligent Design Network in Kansas City supports.

The approach is not creationism, per se, but it's still distinct from the Darwinian science developed through empirical methods since the mid-19th century. Charles Darwin published the bones of his biological breakthrough then, and science educators have taught and fleshed it out for decades.

Krauss' perspective is that the Darwinian approach deserves attention in science classes. Whatever their advocates say, intelligent design and creationism are religion. "I'm fine with religion in religion classes," Krauss said, "not in science."

He gets exercised, passionate, about what he and many colleagues consider assaults on their beloved institution. They especially resent its dilution in education.

It was this issue in Ohio that drew Krauss into a leadership role, when he began publicly fighting over the content of school science curricula. It was, he said, "about the least fun thing I've ever done, but something I had to do."

Why? Science is a rough road to truth, "terrifying," he said. But handled properly, it yields understanding about how the world works.

When you do science

you test your faith'

Here at his office in early August, in a moment of intensity, the slender, dark-haired professor pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

Krauss had been moving at warp speed, explaining his letter to the pope, doing interviews with CNN and public television while writing commentaries for The New York Times.

But when questions engaged him, his eyes narrowed and stilled. He sat in an office crammed with books, posters, cardboard figures of "Star Trek" characters (allusions to his best-selling pop-science book, "The Physics of Star Trek"). His face focused.

"When you do science, you have to test your faith, beliefs, expectations. You go through that process and then come to understand that fundamental things are wrong" with whatever ideas started the process, he said.

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.

An issue is that anti-evolutionists often say belief in Darwinism "is tantamount to atheism," said Robert Pennock, who teaches philosophy of science at Michigan State University.

"That's not a fair characterization. Evolution is no more atheistic than physics or chemistry or, as I say in my 1999 book, Tower of Babel,' plumbing," Pennock said.

Cardinal's comments

set off debate

One of the main tasks of science is to develop new knowledge. Scientists question whether they can draw fresh information out of the intelligent design model.

Krauss said, "If you say a creator guided the process, as the intelligent design people do, then -- " he shrugged, "there's nothing more to investigate or test. You can't look for further understanding. It's not science."

Besides, he said, we have a constitutional requirement to keep church and state -- including publicly funded education -- separate. Making a supernatural being the biological prime mover, "that's religion."

Krauss welcomed Catholics' historic tolerance toward evolution. 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 Krauss and other scientists wanted Benedict, the current pope, to clarify the church's position was that they sensed the decades-old balance recently shifted. The telling moment occurred July 7, when The New York Times published an influential Austrian churchman's statement as an opinion column.

In it, Cardinal Christoph SchÖnborn, archbishop of Vienna, said "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 what inspired him was an earlier essay from Krauss.

In that commentary, Krauss wrote "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, Krauss included, the cardinal's statement went off like a bomb. A religious leader standing on the public square had hurled his glove at the feet of science, saying the process that gave us everything from liver transplants to satellite TV is wrong in its most productive theory of life's development.

This to the institution that over the past 150 years has unearthed more reliable understanding of how our universe operates than humans had amassed in their previous three billion-plus years of worldly habitation.

A biochemist active in the Discovery Institute takes a different view from Krauss and other skeptics. He said there is plenty of opportunity for scientists to develop new knowledge using the intelligent design model.

"My sense is that we'll discover the means to detect the design scientifically," said Michael Behe, professor at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University and a Discovery senior scientist.

"Evolution no longer looks like a random process to me. It looks like a set-up job," he said. "It's no longer a question of faith, either. I think we'll find a way to make this question of design testable."

Behe, a Catholic, said he's grateful SchÖnborn raised the matter so prominently.

The dispute over the cardinal's essay reminds Krauss of Galileo's ordeal. But Phillip Sloan thinks that's way too grand an analogy. A philosopher of science and history at Notre Dame University, he said, "This statement, coming from a cardinal, has no doctrinal basis."

He noted that no pope has proclaimed that "evolution in the Neo-Darwinian sense" is false, as SchÖnborn wrote.

Still, Sloan knows the statement created buzz worldwide, especially in the United States. It is political debate, he said, 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, Sloan, a Catholic who teaches at a pre-eminent Catholic university, said, "It's not the business of theology to dictate the business of science."

Trying to understand

what seems unknowable

Another philosopher of science, Kenneth Waters, said he was grateful SchÖnborn's essay "did not challenge that we have a common ancestor," one of the pillars of evolution. "That separates the cardinal and a lot of people who reject evolution."

Waters is director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota.

He, like Sloan, said the buzz regarding this perceived challenge to science might be bigger than the threat. One reason, he said, is an outgrowth of the fierceness of political debate over science education in America.

Waters is concerned a swath of anti-intellectualism cuts across the American landscape. "People want to reject anything they can't explain with common sense," he said. "For many things there just aren't easy answers."

Krauss, who respects the complexity of the universe, agrees. He examines it all the time.

The struggle to understand what seems unknowable "is something I love," he said. And in his current preoccupation, "My intent is to face up to the continuing attacks on science."

"What they're talking about are metaphysical and religious interpretations, not science. 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 said, "it's a disaster for both science and Catholicism.

"I thought sanity would reign," Krauss said, shaking his head. "We live in dangerous times."

Eventually, FedEx got the letter to the Vatican. By then, the scientist had jetted to Colorado, New York, Singapore for conferences and meetings -- with no reply yet from the pope.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

fbentayou@plaind.com, 216-999-4116




© 2005 The Plain Dealer
© 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.

Henry J wrote:I don't really understand the aversion some people have to the idea that groups of related species are each descended from some one earlier species.

Henry