Leading anti-creationist philosopher admits that evolution is a religionEvolution is religion.This is ignorant foolishness. Evolution was born as a way to explain observed phenomena. It has been tested. It's predictions have occurred. Today, evolution is the bedrock of biology. Even the Catholic Church accepts it.
Another source hard at work in the quote mines. Let's look at what Ruse said further on in that same article:
There is no need to make a religion of evolution. On its own merits, evolution as science is just that -- good, tough, forward-looking science, which should be taught as a matter of course to all children, regardless of creed....And then let's look at something (PDF) he wrote 3 years later:The important point is that we should recognize when people are going beyond the strict science, moving into moral and social claims, thinking of their theory as an all-embracing world picture. All too often, there is a slide from science to something more, and this slide goes unmentioned -- unrealized even.
For pointing this out we should be grateful for the opponents of evolution. The Creationists are wrong in their Creationism, but they are right in at least one of their criticisms. Evolution, Darwinian evolution, is wonderful science. Let us teach it to our children. And, in the classroom, let us leave it at that.
if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today’s professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry. Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where evolution is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave.... Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time.Not simply "admitting" that evolution is a religion, is he? As a rule of thumb, it's always worth tracking down the source of what creationist sites allege someone said. More often than not, they're being deceitful.