[cyclone3483]

I guess I'm in the minority here, being a Christian myself. I think he has to seperate his job from his beliefs. I personally think he is trying to balance being objective in his role as science minister with his faith. His personal beliefs do not affect his job so he therefore does not comment on them. It is possible to do the job and not let faith impact his decisions. eg. If a funding request came for a study on evolution, he would hopefully decide based on the need, the budget, and the importance (to the general populace) of the study, rather than his own personal feelings on it.

The problem is when you get someone in that kind of position, their personal faith (or lack thereof) needs to take a backseat. The argument has been made (thank you Ben Stein) that having an athiest in that position could restrict (and has) study into intelligent design, when there is just as much reason to study it as there is to study evolution.

The RIGHT thing is for the person in that position to put aside their personal beliefs to keep science objective. Anyone arbitrarily deciding that intelligent design or evolution will not be studied because is contrary to their own personal belief system should be removed from their position.

Science is supposed to be objective. If you want to toss someone out of the science minister's position because he is Christian, then you also need to throw all athiests out of similar positions and only agnostics will hold those positions in the future.

Meh, my two cents.