Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

With creationism now coming in Christian and Muslim versions, scientists, teachers and theologians in France are debating ways to counteract what they see as growing religious attacks on science.

Bible-based criticism of evolution, once limited to Protestant fundamentalists in the United States, has become an issue in France now that Pope Benedict and some leading Catholic theologians have criticized the neo-Darwinist view of creation.

An Islamist publisher in Turkey mass-mailed a lavishly illustrated Muslim creationist book to schools across France recently, prompting the Education Ministry to proscribe the volume and question the way the story of life is taught here.

Neuroscientists are making such rapid progress in unlocking the brain’s secrets that some are urging colleagues to debate the ethics of their work before it can be misused by governments, lawyers or advertisers.

The news that brain scanners can now read a person’s intentions before they are expressed or acted upon has given a new boost to the fledgling field of neuroethics that hopes to help researchers separate good uses of their work from bad.

The same discoveries that could help the paralyzed use brain signals to steer a wheelchair or write on a computer might also be used to detect possible criminal intent, religious beliefs or other hidden thoughts, these neuroethicists say.

France’s Education Ministry has warned schools around the country against Islamic creationism theories after several thousand copies of an anti-Darwinist book from Turkey were mailed to them, an official said on Friday.

The lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya, a shadowy figure who runs a large Islamic publishing operation from Istanbul, was sent to schools and universities over the past 10 days in a move that has baffled authorities, she said.

The Turkish original of the 768-page book, which rejects evolution, first appeared in Turkey late last year when it wa also sent unsolicitedly to schools.

It sees Charles Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest as the root of many of today’s ills, including modern terrorism.

A lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation is mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism.

Arriving unsolicited by post, the large-format tome offers 768 glossy pages of photographs and easy-to-read text to prove that God created the world with all its species.

At first sight, it looks like it could be the work of United States creationists, the Christian fundamentalists who believe the world was created in six days as told in the Bible.

But the author’s name, Harun Yahya, reveals the surprise inside. This is Islamic creationism, a richly funded movement based in predominantly Muslim Turkey which has an influence U.S. creationists could only dream of.

Pope Benedict and his former doctoral students plan to publish the proceedings of their weekend seminar on evolution to promote a dialogue between faith and science on the origins of life, participants said.

The minutes, to be issued later this year, will show how Catholic theologians see no contradiction between their belief in divine creation and the scientific theory of evolution, they said after the annual closed-door meeting ended on Sunday.

The theory of evolution has long been controversial in the United States, where conservative Christians oppose teaching it in public schools and promote rival views such as “intelligent design” that scientists reject as religion in disguise.

Pope Benedict and his former doctoral students spent a weekend pondering evolution without discussing controversies over intelligent design and creationism raging in the United States, a participant said on Sunday.

The three-day closed-door meeting at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo outside Rome ended as planned without drawing any conclusions but the group plans to publish its discussion papers, said Father Joseph Fessio S.J.

Media speculation had said the debate might shift Vatican policy to embrace “intelligent design,” which claims to prove scientifically that life could not have simply evolved, or even the “creationist” view that God created the world in six days.

Pope Benedict gathers some of his former theology students on Friday for a private weekend debate on evolution and religion, an issue conservative Christians have turned into a political cause in the United States.

Benedict, who taught theology at four German universities before rising in the Catholic Church hierarchy, has pondered weighty ideas with his former Ph.D students at annual meetings since the late 1970s without any media fuss.

But his election as pope last year and controversies over teaching evolution in the United States have aroused lively interest in this year’s reunion on September 1–3 at the papal summer residence of Castel Gondolfo outside Rome.

Hans Küng is not a man afraid of challenging authority. The liberal Swiss priest has confronted the Vatican so often that he was barred from teaching Catholic theology in 1979 and was long a persona non grata in Rome. He also has clear ideas about where theologians should not tread. The row about evolution and intelligent design, a major issue in the United States, is a case where he says believers should not claim to know more science than the scientists. As a man of faith, Küng sees God reflected in creation, but says this does not mean the Almighty tinkers with the laws of nature or creates life forms so complex they could not have evolved.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna touched off a storm in July 2005 with an op-ed page article in the New York Times questioning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and appearing to endorse the concept of intelligent design—the theory that life forms are too complex to have been the product of random mutation. Scientists accused the 60-year-old cardinal, who has often been named as a possible future pope, of trying to steer Catholic teaching away from its cautiously positive view of evolution and toward what they said was the pseudo-science of intelligent design.