Look Who's Saying ID Ain't Science

First, a very succinct column from Charles Krauthammer.

How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.

Backing up Krauthammer's charge is a pronouncement from the Vatican.

"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

I used to be swayed by ID. Some of the arguments are superficially appealing, especially "irreducible complexity". But that, and every other ID claim, was demolished by fact and evidence. So here I am siding square with the Pope's astronomer, of all people. But it's not about siding for or against anybody, really. This is about not polluting science with religion, nor religion with science.