George Coyne - Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design

Further information: Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church

Coyne has been a vocal opponent of intelligent design since at least August 2005, when his was published in The Tablet. This opposition was further publicized in November 2005, when he was quoted by the ANSA news agency as saying "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." He was also interviewed for the BBC documentary A War On Science where he criticised intelligent design as being unscientific, and suggested that the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn was pressured by the think-tank the Discovery Institute to publish an article in the New York Times critical of evolution.

Coyne has been forthright in criticizing the Church's lukewarm admission of responsibility for its prosecution of Galileo in the early seventeenth century.

Read more about this topic:  George Coyne

Famous quotes containing the words intelligent and/or design:

    “The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife.”
    —St. Francis De Sales (1567–1622)

    “If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
    —Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)