[Buddha-l] Fighting creationism

[Richard Hayes]

Should we on buddha-l lend these French scientists a helping hand?

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=13103	

March 27, 2007
French Scientists Rebut U.S., Muslim Creationism

by Tom Heneghan
Reuters

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 criticized 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.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico