

Guy Consolmagno, astronomer to the pope, is profiled in the Economist. He says intelligent design is "bad theology" that has been "hijacked" by American creationist fundamentalists. He also would be "delighted" to discover intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Consolmagno curates the pope's meteorite collection and is a trained astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican's observatory. He dismissed the ideas of intelligent design – a pseudoscientific version of creationism. "The word has been hijacked by a narrow group of creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it didn't originally mean at all. It's another form of the God of the gaps. It's bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning."

(Hey, you guys won against the pagans centuries ago. Why kick them when they're down?)

Pope's astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him

Photo by The Cleveland Kid. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.