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MANN: Welcome back.

Even many religious people were offended by the president's use of faith to further the campaign for his nominee. She eventually backed out but there is an ongoing tension in U.S. politics between the secular state and an activist religious minority. Is it spreading to science now?

Joining us now to talk about that is Krista Tippet, a journalist who examines issues of religion and ethics on the American Public Radio program "Speaking of Faith."

Thanks so much for being with us.

What is going on? People around the world are going to look at this and wonder if Americans have simply lost their senses. Is there an attack in this country on science?

KRISTA TIPPET, "SPEAKING OF FAITH": Well, I think there is a well- publicized attack on science that is really in its -- it's a very small part of the larger story, of what is happening, of in fact a new conversation that's growing between science and religious thinkers.

And, you know, I think it's important not to take the kinds of stories and the kinds of voices that we just heard and generalize and say that that is where all Americans are. I think that modern science is very complicated, it's exciting, it can be frightening, and perhaps this is a backlash that has to do with people wanting to understand and perhaps being somewhat afraid, but that's not, again, the whole story.

MANN: Well, it would be unfair to pick a small minority of people with extreme ideas and pretend that those people represent a large group of Americans, but it would seem that in public opinion polling more Americans believe that people were created by God than descended from primates and in fact these people seem to be speaking for a growing group of Americans who are coming forward and demanding the right to have their own convictions about the origin of human life, the origins of all life, more and more Americans are demanding the right to have their views represented in the public school system and one presumes eventually in the universities as well.

TIPPET: Right. And, you know, when I hear those statistics that you and I both just heard, I want to know how those questions were posed. And I think that when people are given what seems a stark choice between do you believe in God and do you believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which none of us can fully wrap our minds around, I mean, it's well- documented in science across the ages. I think then people, many Americans, who are very religious, might say I choose God, I believe in God.

But many scientists aren't presenting the choice that way. I think, you know, one of the most interesting conversations I've had recently was actually with an evangelical teacher at Fuller Evangelical Seminary, which is nationally and internationally a very influential place, and she said that what she thinks has changed is that for generations in this country religious Americans, Christian Americans, were taught evolution in school and they were taught to love God and read their Bibles in church, and intuitively they were able to imagine that reality and life and the world can make room for both of those kinds of truths.

What's happening now is that you do have this very well-organized movement and well-funded movement to teach something different, something that in fact goes against many of our instincts, and I think that's what's changed.

MANN: Is this movement essentially made up of evangelicals who are a denomination, after all, that believes very strongly in the literal truth of every word of the Bible? Or are there people of other religious backgrounds or no religious backgrounds who are supporting intelligent design as well?

TIPPET: Well, you know, this clash between religious and scientific ideas is I think more centered in Christianity and more in conservative Christianity. I do always point out that evangelical Christianity in this country, you're talking about 40 percent of the population. Within evangelicalism, there is huge breadths and diversity and, as I said, you know, there are very intellectual teachers within evangelicalism who also revere the knowledge of science.

What I think I also want to say that's very important is that many, many religious people, including if you look at the history of science, I mean, I actually interviewed an Australian astrobiologist recently for a program we're doing on the religious sensibility of Albert Einstein, and he says that theology was the midwife of science. And he points out that in Western culture, and even names that we now wrongly think of as being opposed to religion, Galileo, Newton, even Darwin himself, and into the 20th century somebody like Albert Einstein, you know, especially Darwin and Newton and Galileo, they felt that what they were doing with science was understanding God better. They went from the premise that -- you know, the Americans you just heard a moment ago hold that God created the world, but they believed that nature, that the created world is the works of God and that in understanding nature and the world as it is, they could understand the mind of God.

And that is an impulse that even today is continent with the way many scientists approach their work, whether they're kind of traditionally religious or not, and that's being lost in the way science is being set up as an enemy to religion. And you asked, it really is located in Christianity. There is not this automatic clash in Judaism or in Buddhism or many of the world's other religions.

MANN: On that note, Krista Tippet of "Speaking of Faith," thank you so much for talking with us.

TIPPET: Thanks so much for having me, Jonathan.

MANN: That's INSIGHT. The news continues.

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