Creationism in Europe?

Yahoo news reported this yesterday and here is basically the same thing from The Guardian.

I found it rather strange to hear this at all.

I mean it was only in October when the Council of Europe said that governments should "firmly oppose" creationism but then they are mentioning Britain specifically, which probably means something.

British people usually say that they are the first group who are affected by the influence of American culture and then it spreads to the rest of the continent.

If creationism is allowed to gain a foothold in the UK then it will slowly gain footholds in other countries. Even Catholic countries where our favourite, yet probably unwilling supporter, St Augustine of Hippo, would command more influence among more devout followers but could be quote mined to support creation.

There are historical religious figures that have supported a literal Genesis, and apparently this has been talked about among the Russian Orthodox.

The problem that I have found, as have many people, is that there are clear and quite obvious contradictions in the Bible and in Genesis.

St Augustine of Hippo wrote about an allegorical interpretation mainly because a literal interpretation did not fit his belief about the creation of the universe.

More contradictions can be found at the Skeptics Annotated Bible (the link takes you directly to the Genesis contradictions).

If you want to believe a literal interpretation of the Bible then how do you reconcile yourself with the many and apparent contradictions in the Bible?

The answer is clearly "Blind Faith".

That is what the creationists are encouraging people to believe in blind faith. Such faith is a dangerous thing to have, especially in regards to an important thing like evolution.

As long as the Poms stand up to such a threat then you can keep it down to a minimum. I would think that the first positive step would be to stop them from building a Christian theme park. The second would be for the Government to implement evolution into the Islamic schools that teach Quranic Creationism (but the article doesn't say where, which is important), you can't let some schools teach the wrong thing and tell other schools that they can't. On second thoughts that second point should be first.

If there are already schools that teach Creationism albeit a non-Christian creationism and you are letting them with government funds then you have just given the Christian creationists a foot in the door. Let them teach it in a religion class, just don't let them brand it a science.

If you go ahead and allow them to teach it in science classes then you can do so. I'll be happy to take a job that requires some knowledge of evolution to work. I've always wanted to live in Europe.

There is one other thing that I think should be mentioned here. Why is it that so many creationists are Protestant? There seem to be a rather small representation of Catholics and Orthodox creationists even though they make up a large percentage of Christians in the world.