Albert Einstein — the physicist who would probably be chagrined to learn that both atheists and creationists use his words to defend their belief systems — wrote a little-known 1954 letter labeling the Bible “pretty childish.” Now, in the words of The New York Times, the letter has “poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion.”

Experts estimated the letter would go for no more than $15,000, but it went for $404,000 at a Thursday auction by Bloomsbury in London. Put in perspective, the paper in which Einstein and Michele Besso posit a calculation that later became a bedrock of the General Theory of Relativity went for $398,500, the Times says.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish,” Einstein wrote in the letter, which had been privately owned and known to only a few devoted Einstein scholars. Underscoring, again, the volatility of the roiling science-versus-religion debate, it reopens—and, some hope, nails shut—Einstein’s personal views that most now recognize as too tepid to construe a defense of organized religion or creationism and too strong to back atheism. “A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument—or at least provoke further controversy about his views,” The Guardian says.

For years, his reams of quips and aphorisms on God and religion have provided fodder to antitheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins on one side and the Discovery Institute on the other, all trying to invoke Einstein as an expert witness. But the letter—with its hardest-hitting punch in the above quotation—strikes a greater blow for the no-God camp.

Einstein’s enigmatic views on religion and God have spawned rigorous debate over where the scientist nonpareil actually stood on everything from the historicity of Jesus (authentic, he said, minus miracles and the Resurrection) to how an all-loving, omnipotent God and theodicy could coexist (irreconcilably, he said).

Born into a non-practicing Jewish family, Einstein nonetheless embraced Judaism until, as a teenager, he began turning to a brand of deism close to Spinoza’s quasi-pantheism. He famously wrote: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” He said he “believe[d] in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” Fanatical atheists, he wrote in another letter, “are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’—cannot hear the music of the spheres.”

In his eponymous Einstein biography, Walter Isaacson quotes the Nobel laureate: “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.” It’s these “continual references to God,” the Times says, that have “led some wishful thinkers to try to put him in the camp of some kind of believer or even, not long ago, to paint him as an advocate of intelligent design.” The letter doesn’t help creationists much, but the wishful thinking and willful misrepresenting of Einstein’s views on God are on the other side as well—and with the same fanaticism. This could be why, as the Times also reports, one of the letter’s top bidders was none other than Richard Dawkins.

The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is preparing to defend its Master of Science Education degree program in Texas, a state long recognized for its power to influence national education trends.

Since moving its headquarters to Dallas from El Cajon, Calif., where the ICR has issued graduate degrees since 1981, the institute has faced opposition to its application for a certificate to grant degrees in Texas.

In April, the ICR must provide the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) with additional documentation regarding the validity of its Biblically-based educational programs. The institute believes it will satisfy the commission’s standards. “We are encouraged and confident that our program meets the criteria for science education in the state,” ICR Director of Communications Lawrence E. Ford told WoW. “We teach science in a comprehensive manner, fully immersing our students in the theory of evolution with the added benefit of demonstrating how the evidence of science fits within our belief in a personal Creator-God.”

According to a Dec. 14 ICR press release, the THECB was preparing to approve ICR’s application before national media coverage began. Faculty members hold degrees from “well-regarded” universities, and the curriculum includes secular scientific literature like “Nature” and “Science” magazines.

Ford said the ICR was not surprised by the THECB’s request for additional documentation, as their application was under review when Chris Comer, the former Texas Education Agency’s director of science curriculum, resigned after allegations that she was biased towards teaching intelligent design.

Ford remains optimistic: “For us, it is simply a process. We have and will continue to comply with the normal requests by the THECB and we look forward to the commission’s meeting in April.”

Seventeen scientific organizations are calling on the scientific community to promote the teaching of evolution in scientific education, basing their call on a survey published in the January 2008 issue of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.

The survey looked at how 1,000 people viewed evolution, science, the role of scientists and science education. Researchers said they found a majority belief in evolution (either evolution through natural processes or evolution guided by a “supreme being”) and weaker overall support for creationism (the belief that God created living things in their present form).

The survey also found that people preferred to hear about evolution, creationism and intelligent design from scientists (77%), science teachers (76%), and clergy (62%). Some respondents were ambivalent about scientific education in the public schools, but a majority (53%) favored teaching evolution over creationism or intelligent design.

Gerald Weissmann, editor of FASEB Journal, gave Science Daily the bottom line: “The world is round, humans evolved from an extinct species, and Elvis is dead. … This survey is a wake-up call for anyone who supports teaching information based on evidence rather than speculation or hope; people want to hear the truth, and they want to hear it from scientists.”

Michael Keas, professor of history and philosophy of science at Biola University, disagrees that the survey supports evolution-only education. Keas, a contributor to the supplemental textbook Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism, told WoW that open scientific inquiry means evaluating the evidence for and against science’s dominant theories. Keas believes that other biology textbooks lack this “inquiry-based” approach, and his book fills a void for textbooks that supply only the evidence in favor of Darwin’s theory.

Scientific organizations call for public education in the fundamentals of science, including the scientific method. Keas agrees, saying the survey actually supports his mission: “The main point of science and literacy and science education is to teach science as it’s best practiced by scientists.”

Does an attack on evolution mean “a serious attack on human rights”? That is what the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly will decide this week when it votes on a resolution that urges its 47 member states to oppose the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline.

Creationism is anti-science, anti-progress and anti-democracy, the resolution declares. It is rooted in “forms of religious extremism.” Its proponents are “supporters of a radical return to the past,” and some of them are “out to replace democracy by theocracy.” Muslim creationism is taking hold, the resolution cautions, and countries should “resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion.”

Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute and former UN ambassador to Vienna, said he can’t see the urgency. He said there is no European push to teach either creationism or intelligent design, and he thinks the Council of Europe is “responding to Darwinist organizations and their pressure tactics.”

Creationism is the belief that God created the world in six days, while intelligent design theory merely states there is evidence of an intelligent designer. The resolution called intelligent design “the latest, most refined version of creationism … [but] no less dangerous.” That statement indicates to Mr. Chapman that the council does not understand the issue: “They are trying to broad brush anyone who is critical of Darwin’s theory as a creationist.”

Chapman adds that even setting aside the difference between intelligent design and creationism, “What they say about both of them is untrue about either of them.” The council is taking a political shot, he said, but “they don’t know what they’re shooting at.”