Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap

By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: January 4, 2008
New York Times

---

In the United States, some of our most intractable conflicts revolve around complaints that the constitutional separation between church and state is being violated by government policies which favor the teaching of evolution over other explanations of the origins of life. This raises a politically explosive question: Is science simply a different kind of religion? In a new book, the National Academy of Sciences addresses this crucial question.

---

In 1984 and again in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization, produced books on the evidence supporting the theory of evolution and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes.

On Thursday, it produced a third. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.

“We wanted to produce a report that would be valuable and accessible to school board members and teachers and clergy,” said Barbara A. Schaal, a vice president of the academy, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and a member of the panel that produced the book.

The rest of this article is available from the New York Times.

The book is available from the National Academy of Sciences.