Michael Ruse has been discussing the must-have books in evolution, and the discussion has taken a very strange turn.

What about Darwinism, evolution, and religion? In fact, those most ardent to turn evolution into a religion have tended not to be Darwinians. Herbert Spencer and Thomas Henry Huxley in the nineteenth century and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the twentieth. But the simple fact of the matter is that, use language as you like or not, the fact remains that for many evolutionists – some Darwinian and some not – evolution does function as a secular religion. The creationists are right about this. The right move is to recognize this fact and to move forward, not to deny it.

No, no, no. You could argue that many of us find solace in secularism, or that science provides a story of origins or explanation for the world, and that it does substitute for religion in providing a rational explanation of our place in the universe, but it is not a religion unless you want to say that everything that provides a reference point is a religion. And in particular, scientific disciplines like evolutionary biology are not religions, and scientific theories like evolution are not religions. Ruse must have a very, very broad and peculiar definition of "religion" to think so. Is mathematics also a religion? How about engineering?

This idea plays right into the hands of Johnson and others like him, who have been peddling extreme relativism as one of the planks of their program, and who also think evolution is a religion. Everything is religion to them—I'm waiting for them to come out against the dogma of 2+2=4. It makes it easier for them to pretend half-baked myths have equal merit to tested scientific ideas if they can claim an unjustified equivalence between them.

There is one similiarity…

One final point. I do agree with Sakar that there is more to biology than evolution. But there seems to be something about evolution that attracts philosophers more than the other areas of biology. I found this when I edited Biology and Philosophy. I could never get people to write on anything else! The fact is that evolution is closer to religion than the rest of biology – it asks the ultimate meaning questions about life and humans and our place and history and even future – and so this is what attracts philosophers, even (especially) the secular ones among us.

Scientists do ask the big questions, but they don't declare that all of the answers have been revealed to them. All we have is a useful tool to chip away at the natural world and see what it is made of.

I would like to see a definition of religion that encompasses science. I can imagine something broad, like "a philosophical position that describes an attitude towards reality", but 1) that would sweep all of the major, expressed characteristics of recognized religions under the rug, and 2) would open up religion to the criticism that if reality is the measure, then we should maybe start assessing them on the basis of how closely their views model reality. If anyone wants to claim science is a religion, I also want them to provide a scorecard.