The much-discussed op-ed by Cardinal Schönborn, in which he basically throws away the Catholic Church's support for science, evoked some strange feelings in me. I was rather sad about it, but not for the reasons creationists might assume.

Schönborn's position and the Pope's opinion are entirely irrelevant to science—eppur si muove and all that—so it is really not a biological issue at all. The authority of evolution is derived not from any edicts, there is no Central Committee, nor is there any Great Man who defines it all for us (concepts which are exceedingly hard to get across to creationists), but instead, it is derived from a great many experiments and observations of the natural world. The Pope could decree that the sky was lavender with puce highlights, but it wouldn't change the observable fact of its actual color.

Schönborn has a doctorate in theology and speaks 6 languages, so he probably isn't a grossly stupid fellow, but a position high in the Catholic hierarchy and a background in nothing but religion are not qualifications to discuss biology, as the NYT article shows. His published piece is dogmatically bad science written with the aid of the Discovery Institute. He invents bold lies about the motivations of scientists, and declares that reason supports the unsupported assertions of Intelligent Design creationists.

Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.

There is no evidence, let alone "overwhelming evidence", for design in nature. Scientists do not have the goal of explaining away design, but rather of putting together the best, most accurate explanation of the real world—and many scientists are religious, and the answers they've come up with are in spite of any religious desires. His article is simply bad science, transparently infiltrated by the dishonest vapors of that gang of creationists in Seattle.

Read it with an eye to his sources; his arguments are based entirely on interpretations of a letter by Pope John Paul in 1996, comments he made in 1985, the Catholic Catechism, and Pope Benedict's writings and homilies…how quaint and theological. No reference is made to observations of the real world around us, that thing that good Catholics would call God's Creation.

His op-ed is no direct threat to biological science. It's laughably vacuous, built on a tissue of self-referential readings of dicta by church officials, and represents the kind of doctrinal masturbation that suggests a celibate priesthood is a really bad idea.

So what's to be sad about? There are about a billion Roman Catholics in the world, and one of their leaders has just announced that, by his interpretation, you cannot simultaneously be a right-thinking member of that church and a person of reason. I assume many Catholics will just wave off Schönborn and ignore him; some will take this as another sign that the Church has abandoned rational principles and will be driven away; and some, unfortunately, will seize upon this bit of uninformed dogma to fortify their prejudices. The net result will be that the Catholic Church will take yet another step towards being a bastion of ignorance.

We really don't need any more institutions striving to make the public more stupid. Even with my already low opinion of religion, I can't be happy at seeing Catholicism becoming more dogmatic and disconnected from reality…even if it does generate a few more apostates.