In 2006, the pope fired his chief astronomer, George Coyne, “after the American Jesuit priest made similar comments in the Tablet,” the Times reported. “The sacking was interpreted by commentators as a clear endorsement for intelligent design” (ibid.). Intelligent design refers to the belief that the origin of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not by an undirected process such as natural selection.Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, had openly criticized intelligent design. In a lecture at Palm Beach Atlantic University last year, Coyne stated, “Religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly.”He directly criticized Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn for an attack he had made on neo-Darwinism and for supporting intelligent design. Coyne emphasized that intelligent design diminishes God into “an engineer who designs systems rather than a lover.”
He explained, “God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity. … God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates, loves.”
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