French teachers look to counteract ‘religious attacks’ on evolution

WITH creationism now coming in Christian and Muslim versions, scientists, teachers and theologians in France are debating ways to counteract what they see as growing religious attacks on science.

Bible-based criticism of evolution, once limited to Protestant fundamentalists in the United States, has become an issue in France now that Pope Benedict and some leading Catholic theologians have criticised the neo-Darwinist view of creation.

An Islamist publisher in Turkey mass-mailed a lavishly illustrated Muslim creationist book to schools across France recently, prompting the Education Ministry to proscribe the volume and question the way the story of life is taught here.

The Bible and the Koran say God directly created the world and everything in it. In Christianity, fundamentalists believe this literally but the largest denomination, Catholicism, and most mainline Protestant churches read it more symbolically.

This literalism led Christian fundamentalists to reject the theory of evolution elaborated in the 19th century by Charles Darwin, the foundation stone of modern biology. Muslim scholars also dispute evolution.

“There is a growing distrust of science in public opinion, especially among the young, and that worries us,” said Philippe Deterre, a research biologist and Catholic priest who organised a colloquium on creationism for scientists at the weekend.

“There are many issues that go beyond strictly scientific or strictly theological explanations,” he said at the colloquium in the university town of Orsay, southwest of Paris. Deterre’s Blaise Pascal Network promotes understanding between science and religion.

Barred from teaching creationism in US public schools, some conservative Christians now advocate the “intelligent design” argument that some forms of life are too complex to have evolved. Scientists call this creationism in disguise.

These American concerns caught notice in Europe after Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, a confidant of Pope Benedict, attacked neo-Darwinist theories in 2005 in what seemed to be a move to ally the Catholic Church with “intelligent design.”

These theoretical debates became a pressing issue in France last month when schools unexpectedly received free copies of an Atlas of Creation by Turkish Islamist Harun Yahya.

Paleontologist Marc Godinot said creationists and their critics drew overblown conclusions from a theory that explains how life developed but not how it was created. “The ultimate origin of life is not a question science can answer,” he said.