Religious conservatives have a special reason for disliking natural selection. There may be nothing necessarily anti-Christian about Darwin's theory (which was hailed by Charles Kingsley, a contemporary clergyman, as evidence of the majesty of God), but if God has a plan for the world and everyone in it, as most American Protestants and President George Bush say they believe, then it is much easier to imagine evolution occurring under divine guidance than as a result of random mutations and the survival of the fittest. By providing an explanation consistent with those beliefs, intelligent design has proved tempting to conservative Christians everywhere, not just in America.

In early July, Christoph Schönborn, the cardinal archbishop of Vienna, rejected “the supposed acceptance—or at least acquiescence—of the Roman Catholic Church” in “neo-Darwinian dogma”. He conceded that “evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true”, but argued that “evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense—an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection—is not.” The Catholic Church has long turned its back on a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. It does not seem to be doing the same with intelligent design.

Intelligent design rears its head

The Economist