RE: [asa] Vatican Astronomer Replaced

This is a personal reply from Glenn Branch at NCSE:

It's quite a tendentious account; after all, Coyne is 73 years old, and his
retirement could have been predicted in any case. And there's no reason to
think that Coyne's successor's view differs from Coyne's; on the contrary,
in a story for Reuters in June 2006, Alan Elsner wrote of Coyne and his
colleagues (including his successor Jose Gabriel Funes):

In the process, they have emerged as a powerful voice against "creationism"
and the theory of "intelligent design," which holds that certain forms in
nature are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must
have been created by a "designer" who might be called God. Like all the
priest-scientists, Funes said he kept his astronomy and religion separate.
"When I teach at the University of Arizona, I tell students, 'I am a priest,
a Jesuit, but my class is a science class ... and Science is about natural,
not supernatural causes,'" he said.

http://www.alanelsner.com/blogger.html

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org

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Received on Wed Aug 23 09:39:07 2006