It is important to make the distinction between the process of scientific discovery and the world views which the individuals involved in science hold. The purity, in contrast to religion, that scientific thinking provides, is found in the fact that if any explanation arises that is a better suited, or has the benefit of stronger evidence; the new explanation replaces the old relatively quickly. Science itself is independent of those who work in the field and is by definition amoralistic. The pseudo religious or materialistic world view, that many experts in the field or those who study science (whether they be BYU professors or Richard Dawkins), have created or hold, should be considered separate from their work in science. The fact that Darwin was agnostic is irrelevant when considering the evidential validity of the evolutionary explanation. By contrast, Western or Christian religion is inseparably tied to the individuals who profess its validity, due to the key assumption that understanding comes from an individual connecting with some source of absolute truth. Perhaps you should delve into why so many people that accept this bold religious assumption are so suspicious of scientific, non-world view, explanations of natural phenomena, like evolution.

Joe, I disagree with your opinion that Darwin's agenda was to eliminate any involvement of God in the creation. He said in the last edition of "Origin Of Species"..."There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." You may still doubt Charles Darwin's motives, but "by the Creator" IS in there. Why would God be less of a god if he had all that knowledge that he could start the process and it turn out as excpected. Doesn't God know the beginning from the end? Discovering natural selection was not anti-God. It was Man following God's admonition to subdue the Earth...by learning more about it. As far as the accusation made at some pt. that Hitler used natural selection as his excuse...ANY true priciple can be used for evil.

Hi, stumbled upon the responses to this article while looking for a defintion of something entirely different.

St. Thomas Aquinas said about sin:

1. It darkens the intellect
2. It disorders the passions
3. It perverts the will

Did you know that many of the craters on the moon were named after jesuit priests of the catholic church?

It seems to me that in their Astronomy they contirbuted to human scientific understanding while living a devout religious life.

My point is that religion and science do not need to be mutually exclusive.

Religion and an humanist ethic of the "common good" are compatible.

Perhaps secularists and God fearing believers can co-exist and have positive influences on each other.

Peace to you all.

For a set of interesting stories about contemporary seekers faced with the fierce contradictions and disastrous historical consequences of the materialist belief systems that shaped the 20th-21st century mind, see Nickell John Romjue's book, "The Black Box: Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud."