Science and faith: Bury the hatchet?

I just stumbled across this on MSNBC, and would've missed it if I hadn't been poking around the bottom of the page. Why is it that fundamentalist attacks against evolution get above-the-fold coverage, but when religious leaders come out in support of science, it's always buried?

A Vatican cardinal said Thursday that the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into “fundamentalism” if it ignores scientific reason.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, who heads the Pontifical Council for Culture, made the comments at a news conference on a Vatican project to help end the “mutual prejudice” between religion and science that has long bedeviled the Roman Catholic Church and is part of the evolution debate in the United States.

Nice. And again, Galileo is pointed to as the catalyst for this initiative. The poor guy suffered intolerably, but his sacrifices seem to be paying off now to some extent. And look! In addition to some reasonable assertations that science needs ethical guidance religion can provide (you may dismiss the religious component of that statement, but certainly not the ethics portion), Cardinal Poupard also takes a swipe at the fundamentalists and creationists in the U.S.:

“But we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism,” he said. “The faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity.”

The article goes on to point out that Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican's Science, Theology and Ontological Quest program, reaffirm's the Catholic Church's support for evolution as a scientific theory, and is "more than a hypothesis." Yay! Take that Michael Behe! You too, Discovery Institute!

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