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Créationnisme contre science : l’Intelligent Design bientôt près de chez nous ?

Dans: Opinions, Enjeux, débats, prospective, Education et formation - Par Cyril Fievet le 25/05/2005

|original article  Accueil Internet ACTU

Creationism Against Science: Will Intelligent Design Soon Come To Our Shores? By Cyril Fievet le 25/05/2005

The debate has raged across the Atlantic since the beginning of May. Opposing the science community is a concept known as “Intelligent Design” (ID). In short, this concept calls into question the scientific theory of Darwin and, more generally, refutes the fact that all living species are the fruit of a natural evolution, the result of hundreds of million years of continual transformations. As its name – sometimes translated into French as "dessein intelligent " – implies, ID’s proponents claim that the world and everything in it were created by the action of a "supreme being", pointing to evidence of an "intelligent" know-how. Although its proponents deny the connection, the theory is clearly connected to creationism.

That these theories have existed for a long time, is not shocking in and of itself. What is shocking, however, is the unprecedented offensive undertaken by proponents of ID, to introduce their proposition into public schools, as a competitor of the established scientific model.

Since October 2004, pupils in Dover, Pennsylvania, have been required to learn about ID, which is considered a "pseudo-science" by all major scientific organizations. However, it is in Kansas that the debate is sharpest. From May 5 to May 12, the Kansas Board of Education held hearings as to whether or not it ID would be included in the school curriculum as a complement to the usual scientific theories. The debate, far from being limited to Kansas or Pennsylvania, has garnered national attention. Vast media coverage and numerous televised talk shows make for hours of great listening, with even the very serious program, Nature, deciding to cover the subject. While no decision will be made until this summer, there is little doubt that the coverage of the subject will continue unabated.

Moreover, the debate is far from limited to these isolated cases. In fact, 20 of the 50 American states are considering adjusting scientific teaching. On May 3, 2005, a |bill bill was introduced in New York that sought to impose the teaching of ID on students in that state. Richard Firenze, a New York professor of biology warns: The test of this law is utterly absurd… those of us who worry about the scientific education of our children must become aware that the creationists’ attempts to sabotage the teaching of biology are not limited to places like Georgia or Kansas".

In France, the American debate is barely commented on. In April, Corine Lesnes noted, "the worrying offensive of the American creationists" in an article in |Le Le Monde. Explaining that "there are multiple initiatives in the United States to introduce doubt into theory of evolution" and that "evolution is becoming the new battleground in the one of those culture wars of which Americans are so fond."

If one is not mistaken, this current trend in United States is extremely serious.

Most importantly, this debate is about those things that are most dear to us: the dissemination of knowledge, information and education. It is also important because this neo-creationist offensive is itself very well carried out. One could even say that it is clever.

As |r Robert McHenry, former Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, noted last week in an unrestrained article entitled "Intelligent Decline": "ID partisans have trained themselves not to be too specific about the Designer, either, for they have learned the lesson left by the political failure of their predecessors, the Creation Scientists, namely, that too much frankness in the matter of Who the Intelligent Designer is does not pay. Thus they carefully avoid any reference that could appear to be of a theological nature ". Indeed, one also notes that the word "god" is almost never used in ID texts, which skillfully mix examples of pseudo-science, carefully chosen discoveries that apparently support the concept of an "intelligent creator", and speech in favor of freedom of expression and opinion.

The current course of ID is clearly militant, but it is also of great scope. As Corine Lesnes says, "scientists worry about ID appearing to be a legitimate adversary". The day before yesterday, |r Richard Dawkins, one of the preeminent specialists on the theory of the evolution, noted in the British Times: "It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed."

Indeed, the proponents of ID are very well organized, particularly on the Internet. |t The Discovery Institute, directed by a former member of the Reagan Cabinet and former ambassador of the United States to the UN in Vienna, |s stresses that "more than 400 scientists support the concept of ID". The institute set up a rather effusive blog on the subject, christened |i"Evolution News & Views", while the official site publishes media articles that are favorable to the movement, some of which are written by members of the institute. The |i IDEA Center (Intelligent Design Awareness Evolution), has a large, professionally designed site, which also includes many references, articles and books favorable to ID. It also contains a |l list of student clubs created to support ID. There are scores of these clubs in the United States, and they also exist in Africa (Kenya), Canada and the Philippines.

Several leaders of the movement have blogs, filled with pro-ID arguments. More pernicious, some blogs (such that of the journalist |d Denyse O' Leary) are presented in the form of "neutral" initiatives intended to chronicle the controversy, but that are clearly "pro-ID" ("the universe and certain forms of life bring the proof of the intelligent intention ", is found for example one of O’Leary’s blogs).

Using effective networking, all the articles, books and sites are quoted, linked and duplicated. Without a doubt, this well-oiled machine, which boasts of articles written by respected intellectuals, can be quite disturbing. With an arsenal of quotations and crafted explanations, these sites serve to inspire doubt – both on the Web and in the soul.

The force with which the movement operates has disturbed the scientific community. Some scientists react with virulence. However, others, perhaps too "intellectually shocked" by the existence of a concept that calls into question what has been proven by scientific observation, seem not to know how to approach the debate. In Kansas, the majority of the scientific community |b boycotted the hearings held by Board of Education, with only a lawyer coming forth on the last day of the hearings to state objections to the plans of ID’s proponents.

The scientific press, however, is more entrenched. At the end of April, the scientific weekly magazine |n Nature considered it regrettable that "the idea of intelligent design is being promoted in schools and universities in the United States and Europe." and, "rather than ignoring it", advised the scientists "scientists need to understand its appeal and help students recognize the alternatives." Paradoxically, in order to better counter the arrival of pseudo-scientific concept, the magazine suggested that teachers do not hesitate to tackle questions of faith, in order to show their students that religious belief is not incompatible with a true scientific discipline.

The mainstream media has so far been very even-handed in their treatment of ID – sometimes too much so, it seems to me. A very long article last week in the |w Washington Post, which was taken from an interview of Phillip Johnson, a skilled professor at the University of Berkeley in California, and one of the principal proponents of the ID movement, is quite astonishing. The article, which is written from a neutral standpoint, never offers an opinion. Rather, the opposing arguments are well stated, with strong quotations, but in the end, it is merely presented as a simple debate, carried by out two opposing but equally credible groups. Not surprisingly, the article is reproduced in its entirety and without comment on several “pro-ID” sites, beginning with that of the Discovery Institute.

However, it seems to me that the subject should not be given a simple journalistic treatment. Even if there are still unknowns in our comprehension of the world and its complexity, one cannot simply oppose the multiple experiments and scientific observations that confirm the biological evolution of the species, with a mere concept. One cannot, a fortiori, oppose science based on convictions that are religious in nature. Moreover, when it comes to the teaching of knowledge, one cannot admit the least deviation from accepted methods.

Need one fear that what is currently occurring on the other side of the Atlantic will one day come to Europe, or to France? I would like to think not, but is it not better to be prepared? Did not France recently reform of the 1905 law regarding secularity? Does not one see emerging from there, on the Internet and elsewhere, the outrageous blogs of the creationists, who qualify Darwin as a Nazi and refute each one of his scientific discoveries?

Let us not doubt, then, that this movement – or rather this ideological battle – has only just begun.

William Dembski, one of the most active leaders of the ID movement, leaves no doubts as to the extent and to the stakes of the battle: "I predict that Bush and Benedict XVI will play the same role in the disintegration of the theories of the evolution (i.e. of this form of atheistic materialism which dominates the West) Reagan and John Paul II played in the disintegration of Communism". 

Nothing good or positive can come from the mixture of science, religion and politics. In any event, it seems to me to be imperative that we be very, very vigilant.

(Nota bene: The National Center for Science Education, founded in the US in 1981, in part to fight against the introduction of creationism into public schools, is playing an active role in today’s battle against the ID movement. On its side, the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) in 2002, in a unanimously adopted resolution, condemned ID: "the AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of "intelligent design theory" as a part of the science curricula of the public schools;")