By Agostino Bono
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) – The then-director of the Vatican Observatory called the concept of intelligent design "absurd" and part of a religious fundamentalist movement in the United States, which wants science to show that God exists.

"They are using the Bible as science, as a source of scientific knowledge. This is wrong," Jesuit Father George Coyne told Catholic News Service after a March 27, 2006, lecture in Washington.

The earliest date given for the start of modern science is the 13th century, more than 1,000 years after all of the books of the Bible were written, he said.

"How could biblical writers draw on science when modern science didn't exist yet?" said Father Coyne.

He also discussed intelligent design in his speech on the evolution of the universe and in a subsequent question-and-answer period. His talk was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Intelligent design is a religious movement based on fear that if you don't teach an alternative to evolution, we will have a lot of little atheists running around," he said.

Since Charles Darwin in the 19th century advanced the concept of the biological evolution of the human species there has been "a fear in religious cultures that if evolution is true then there is no place for God," he said. "Why evolution denies God, I can't understand."

Science is neutral regarding atheism or belief in God, he said. The aim of science is to deal with material things in a methodical way to verify or falsify principles, he said.

Supporters of intelligent design say there are gaps in evolutionary theory and those can be better explained scientifically by their own theory that there are a design and purpose inherent in life-forms which spring from an unnamed intelligence.

Father Coyne said pitting intelligent design as an alternative to evolution is a "serious problem" that belittles God and science.

People who look to science first to find signs of God's existence reverse the process by which believers can use the world around them to learn about God, Father Coyne said.

Faith is a gift from God which involves his personal relationship with believers and with communities of believers, he said. Once believers have this personal relationship, a "second reflection" leads them to seek insights in creation, he said.

"We have to see God's relationship with us first and then see that this is the same God who created the universe," he said.

The Old Testament teaches this, he said.

The Jews first had a personal relationship with a God who did things for them such as freeing them from Egyptian slavery, he said.

"It was upon second reflection that they realized that this was the God of creation," he said.

When asked if life exists elsewhere in the universe, Father Coyne said, "We don't know."

He held out the possibility that life exists on other planets but said the only thing science can prove is that there is life on earth and that it is continually evolving.

If life were to be discovered elsewhere "then the universe is fertile with life," he said.

Science has shown that "life is so hard to come by on earth," as a series of chemical reactions over billions of years were required before the first life-forms appeared, he said.

"If it happened at least twice, then it happened many times," he said.

Father Coyne said scientists understand that there is "a degree of ignorance associated with scientific research" because they know big gaps exist in knowledge about how the universe came to be and evolves.

But scientists need to do a better job communicating this "degree of ignorance" to the general public, he said.

Despite these gaps, evolution is still the best scientific explanation of the facts regarding the origin of human life, he said.

The universe is 13.7 billion years old "give or take 0.2 billion," he said. If this were condensed into a calendar year, the amount of time humans have spent in scientific investigation amounts to one second, he said.

In August 2006, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Argentine Jesuit Father Jose Funes to be the director of the Vatican Observatory. The astronomer, an expert on disk galaxies, had served as a staff astronomer at the Vatican Observatory since 2000. Father Funes succeeded Father Coyne, who had served as director since 1978.