O.C. RELIGION : God Welcome in Biologist’s Lab : Ex-Priest’s Unique Perspective Bridges Gap Between Science, Religion

Religion and science aren’t mutually exclusive in Francisco J. Ayala’s universe. He’s an evolutionary biologist and an ordained priest. Ayala believes in God even as he stands stooped over in his laboratory, juggling beakers and breeding new kinds of fruit flies.

As an authority in two communities with a history of antagonism, faith and evolutionary biology, Ayala has found a peaceful coexistence for science and religion--in his life and his work.

Ayala has been a professor of biology at UC Irvine for 12 years. His fruit fly studies have won him international acclaim within the scientific community. By altering the process of natural selection in his laboratory, Ayala is creating a new species of Drosophila.

Ayala has made the pursuit of science his life. But it wasn’t always his first priority: Ayala, born in Madrid in 1934, was ordained a Dominican priest in 1960.

Shortly thereafter, however, he left the priesthood and moved to New York City, where he earned a doctorate in genetic biology at Columbia University in 1964. His first job out of Columbia was at The Rockefeller University in New York City, where he studied how new species evolve from older ones.

Since 1992, Ayala has served on President Clinton’s scientific advisory committee. He’s also involved with the National Academy of Sciences and is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific organization.

Stuffed birds collected from the Amazon hang off eight bookcases in Ayala’s tidy and tasteful office. In the corner there’s a framed photo of Charles Darwin, the man credited with the theory of evolution, and a yellowed letter, an original note from Darwin that Ayala received as a gift.

Darwin made his work possible, said Ayala, who frequently is asked to lecture on the intersection of science and religion, a topic that always surfaces in his annual freshman biology class of 1,000 students.

“You can be a good scientist and still believe in God,” said Ayala. “It’s quite possible to see the presence of God in evolution.”

Ayala was outraged by the Kansas State Board of Education’s decision in August to remove most mentions of evolution from the science curriculum.

The board also decided to drop all references to the Big Bang theory of cosmology as well as to macroevolution, the process by which one species evolves into another.

“To learn modern biology without evolution is like trying to [learn] mathematics without subtraction and addition,” he said. “It’s central to every discipline of biology.”

Ayala said he’s been flooded with calls and e-mails from the media, the scientific community and religious fundamentalists who aren’t happy with his vehement reaction.

“The decision in Kansas is making us the laughingstock of the world,” said Ayala.

The worst part, he said, is that many students coming out of Kansas schools may have a limited education in biology that will hamper their admission to college and, eventually, to medical schools.

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Ayala has participated in court battles about the teaching of evolution. Along with Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould, he testified in a landmark court test of an Arkansas law requiring equal time for evolution and “creation science” in the classroom.

“We need to keep religion out of science classes,” said Ayala. “We shouldn’t pretend that religious statements are science statements.”

The federal judge in the case, William Overton, threw out the state law in 1981, ruling that creation science “has no scientific merit or educational value.”

He ruled that “since creation science is not science, the conclusion is inescapable that the only real effect of [the law] is the advancement of religion,” which violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of separation of church and state.

The U.S. Supreme Court later let Overton’s ruling stand and banned the teaching of creationism in public schools.

“Trying to teach the book of Genesis as science is as much an insult to religion as it is to science,” Ayala said. “The purpose of the Bible is to teach us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens are made.”

Ayala said he’s mystified by fundamentalists who insist that coming from clay--part of the premise of creationism--is somehow more noble than evolving from apes.

“Why is it better to come from clay?” he said. “Monkeys and apes are lovely animals, in my book. They’re much better than clay.”