Religious worship was legalized in 1991 and Cubans are now increasingly open about their Christianity. Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega has held open-air masses in Havana, attended by thousands. The Pope's coming visit is helping to revive interest in religion. As in Poland and Nicaragua before that, his visit may also spark greater public demand for the recognition of rights and freedoms. Religious faith has often throughout history unsettled the most tyrannical regimes.
Faith provides people with a sense of morality, duty and loyalty that extends beyond ideology.
In a startling about face, the National Association of Biology Teachers, which has long stood firm against evangelical rejection of naturalism, recently excised two words from its platform on teaching evolution. They are promoting the idea that living organisms and the universe are so impossibly complex that the only plausible conclusion is that of intelligent design. Phillip Johnson, who once clerked for the liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren and who now holds an endowed law school chair at the University of California at Berkeley, is traveling the country challenging the naturalism that he says permeates modern education and science. This strategy is working in that it is building the case that atheistic, naturalistic evolution is a bankrupt system that simply does not hold up to intellectually honest scrutiny. We must applaud this development.