After watching the Nova series about the Dover trial I was struck by how clearly the explanation for the differing numbers of chromosomes in apes and humans was presented. I did some searching and found this interesting video of a self-professed roman catholic biologist explaining the process very clearly. His comments at the end of the video are very revealing and also bemusing as well - how can religious scientists reconcile what they believe with scientific knowledge? Intellectual Compartmentalisation is how they do it and I find this process amazing (and worrying). To quote Richard Dawkins - “There are people who muddle along, and that’s fine if they haven’t really thought either of those positions through very thoroughly,” he says. “But there are others who know that it’s contradictory and still somehow manage to hold the two simultaneously. That, I can’t understand. It’s a feat of psychological gymnastics which, like the splits, I’m not capable of doing. These are people like the American geologist I quote in the book, Kurt Wise, who says in effect: ‘Even if all the evidence, every single jot of it, was to the contrary, I would still believe that the earth was only 6,000 years old, because that’s what scripture says.’ And he knows perfectly well that every bit of evidence does contradict it, and yet he’s holding those contradictory beliefs. I couldn’t do it.”

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