Catholic church sells its soul

A news article about a Vatican conference that I previously reported on this blog says,

ROME (AP) — A Vatican-backed conference on evolution is under attack from people who weren't invited to participate: those espousing creationism and intelligent design.

The Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent design research, says it was shut out from presenting its views because the meeting was funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, a major U.S. nonprofit that has criticized the intelligent design movement. . . . . .

. . . . An official with the Pontifical Council for Culture, which is backing the conference, said the Templeton grant covered almost half the meeting's budget. But the official, the Rev. Tomasz Tramfe, also denied Templeton put any restrictions on who was invited to speak . . . . .

. . . .[The Rev. Marc Leclerc, the conference director and a professor of philosophy of nature at the Pontifical Gregorian University,] denied the decision had anything to do with Templeton's funding for the conference. "Absolutely not. We decided independently within the organizing committee, in total autonomy," Leclerc said.

That's nice. So what the conference organizers are saying is that they were not pressured by the Templeton Foundation to discriminate against critics of evolution but decided to discriminate on their own anyway. And if the conference organizers sincerely believed that critics of evolution should be excluded, then IMO the conference organizers should have rejected the Templeton Foundation funding in order to avoid even giving the appearance that they were pressured by the Templeton Foundation. As Archie Bunker said, the pope has more money than god, so the Templeton Foundation funding should not have been needed. Darwinists are fond of boasting that the Catholic church is very evolution-friendly, but this exclusion of evolution critics from a Vatican conference raises serious doubts about the sincerity of the Catholic church's alleged evolution-friendliness.

The news article also said,

Muslim creationists also complained about the conference.

Oktar Babuna, a representative of a prominent Turkish creationist, Harun Yahya, was denied the right to speak at the opening session Tuesday. Participants took the microphone away from Babuna when, during a question-and-answer session, he challenged them to give proof of transitional forms of animals in Darwinian evolution.

A post on this blog discusses Harun Yahya.

The Vatican conference is discussed on Evolution News & Views [1] and Fatheaded Ed Brayton's blog. [2].
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