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.