Pope's statement about evolution was mistranslated (Talk.Origins)

Claim CA660:


 * Pope John Paul II's statement that evolution is "more than a hypothesis" is a mistranslation; it should be "more than one hypothesis," implying a lack of unanimity among scientists.

Source: No source given.

CreationWiki response:

The official Roman Catholic newspaper would disagree with the author here, as it, too, translated the word "une" (which can mean "one" or "a/an") as "one". Not only would that newspaper know a little more about French than the author, but it would also know more about what the Pope was saying.

Note that what the author is really saying is that the Pope was simply saying that evolution is widely accepted among scientists today. The Pope did not make any statement of he himself accepting or denying evolution. But to me it appears that the author is choosing his words carefully so that it would seem to some of his readers that he was saying the Pope accepts evolution himself.

If the science weren't in dispute, Talk.Origins would not exist.

What does the author mean by this? Does he mean that scientists show "substantial unanimity" in agreement that the theory of evolution is true, or does he mean that scientists are unanimous on the points of the theory of evolution (i.e. the mechanisms of evolution)? It doesn't matter, because he would be wrong on both counts. Perhaps the author misworded what he was really saying, but "substantial unanimity" means 100% unanimous, and it is clear that there are thousands of scientists who do not believe in the theory of evolution. Scientists are very divided on the smaller points of the theory of evolution, mainly because they can't really do much more than hypothesize about how things might have happened.

And the National Center for Science Education is just that: it is not a group dedicated to scientific research, and wouldn't know too much about how many scientists believe in creation, especially considering the fact that it is overwhelmingly a secular humanist organization.