Science and religion are not enemies

From the Vancouver Sun.

Known among scientists as the Renaissance man of evolutionary biology, Francisco J. Ayala has won this year's prestigious and lucrative Templeton Prize for his life's work arguing that science and religion are compatible.

After being named the winner of the world's largest academic award at a news conference in Washington, D.C., Thursday, the California-based biologist and philosopher described the ever polarizing approaches to life as merely two windows into the same world.

"I contend that science and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction ... if they are properly understood," he said.

While science looks at how the planets move, the composition of matter and the origin of species, religion focuses on the relationship between people and their creator, moral values and the meaning of life.

"It is only when assertions are made beyond their legitimate boundaries that religion and science, and evolutionary theory in particular, appear to be antithetical," he said.

Ayala goes a step further, asserting that the theory of evolution is more in concert with a religious belief in an omnipotent and benevolent God than the tenets of Creationism and intelligent design.

"The natural world abounds in catastrophes, disasters, imperfections, dysfunctions, suffering and cruelty," he said.

"People of faith should not attribute all this misery, cruelty and destruction to the specific design of the creator. I rather see it as a consequence of the clumsy ways of nature and the evolutionary process."

The annual award, worth one million pounds sterling -- about $1.5 million Cdn -- honours the person who best "affirms life's spiritual dimension."

But in a recent interview from Washington, the 76-year-old refused to discuss his own personal religious and spiritual beliefs for fear of criticism.

"Whatever my answer is going to be will give reason to one side or the other to argue that the reason I take the position that I take is because I'm a believer or ...