God Didn't Create Death

BERLIN — Benedict XVI, in his first extended reflections on evolution published as pope, says that Darwin's theory cannot be finally proven and that science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity's view of creation. In a new book, Creation and Evolution, published Wednesday in German, the pope praised progress gained by science, but cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer. He stopped short of endorsing intelligent design, but said scientific and philosophical reason must work together in a way that does not exclude faith.

Benedict added that the immense time span that evolution covers made it impossible to conduct experiments in a controlled environment to finally verify or disprove the theory. "We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory," he said. Evolution has come under fire in recent years by proponents — mostly conservative Protestants — of "intelligent design," who believe that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by a higher force rather than evolving from more primitive forms.

• JJ Commentary: The whole debate about evolution, creationism and intelligent design misses one very key point. Who or what created death? Arguments for intelligent design imply that God created death as part of the natural world, but the Bible says that death came as the result of mankind’s sinfulness. God never meant for pain, suffering and death to be part of this world.