Making God good

INTELLIGENT design (ID) is not just bad science, it is bad religion, says Francisco Ayala, and he should know: he once trained for the Catholic priesthood, and is now an evolutionary biologist. This sensitive book is an attempt to do what many – Richard Dawkins on one side, the pope and creationists on the other – say cannot be done. It tries to find a place for natural selection in religious explanations of the world. Darwin is a friend to religion, Ayala says, because his theory lets God off the hook: dysfunctions and disease were not designed by God, they…