What are your objections to the theory of evolution?

Evolution is a scientific theory. What I call evolutionism is an ideological view that says evolution can explain everything in the whole development of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I consider that an ideology. It's not good for science if it becomes ideological, because it leaves it own field and enters the area of philosophy, of world views, maybe of religion.

This is not primarily a religious question, but one of reason. Can one reasonably say the origin of man and of life can be explained only by material causes? Can matter create intelligence? This question cannot be answered scientifically, because the scientific method cannot grasp it. Here we can only argue philosophically, metaphysically, or religiously.

Reason can recognize that matter cannot organize itself. That it at least needs information, and information is an expression of intelligence.

How do you see Darwin?

"The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin is one of the greatest works in the history of ideas. That does not mean that I agree with all of it. But "The Origin of Species"--however you understand it, whether you approve it or not--is an intellectual milestone. If Darwin's theories are scientific hypotheses, however, they must be open to scientific criticism. What I criticize is a kind of immunization strategy, as if it were an offense to Darwin's dignity if someone scientifically criticizes Darwin's theory and says, Here and there are points that can't be explained with this theory.

You've said that scientists have been arrogant in this debate.

There is almost a ban on debate. Critics of evolution theory are discriminated against and discredited from the start. What I would like to see in schools is a critical, open, and positive spirit so that we don't make a dogma of evolution theory but we say, "Here is a theory. A lot speaks for it in many points, but there are points where it has no answer." Of course, we should not claim to teach evolution but actually teach the ideology of evolutionism. If one does it, this must be clearly stated.

"I think, as do many other people, that both are open to each other and that they should not put each other in question. There is not a wall of separation between them."

"For 30 years, I've heard from the pope, from Professor [Josef] Ratzinger
[Benedict's name before he assumed the papacy] that the church has the task in
these times of defending reason. It must defend reason against a reductionism
that in the end, ideologically speaking, is a kind of materialism."

"The question of the Creator belongs in religion class. The question of the "intelligent project of the cosmos," as the pope put it, naturally belongs in with science. "

"The "survival of the fittest" model has become the guiding pattern for free-market economics. But life functions roughly 80 percent in a synergistic and symbiotic way and 20 percent as a struggle...We overlook the fact that the economy needs first of all a model of cooperation and not a model built on the survival of the fittest."