Das Buch Wer mitmacht, hat Recht!

German news website WELT ONLINE reports:

The Minster of Education and Cultural Affairs of German federal state Hessen, Karin Wolff (CDU) (German Wikipedia entry), wants to see Genesis being taught in biology class.

Believe and science; Hand in hand?

Karin Wolff repeatedly demanded that Intelligent Design be taught since Hessen’s school law allows for “interdisciplinary teaching.”
“Pupils have to be given the chance to compare scientific and theological explanations of the world,” says Wollf. “Science explains how the world came to be while theology is about interpretation and questions of meaning.”
She claims that biology lessons should also point out that there are limits to human knowledge.

Her efforts are supported by chairman of the parliamentary group CDU, Christian Wagner, as well as Chief Minister Roland Koch (CDU).
Even chairman of the parliamentary group FDP, Jörg-Uwe Hahn, thinks teaching creationism would be OK if it happens in grade 12, as Koch suggested.

Voices against the proposal

Wolff: “surprising parallelism” of evolution and creation.

Ruth Wagner (FDP), former Minster of Science of Hessen, demanded that there should be a clear separation between the world of believe and scientific teachings. Members of political parties SPD and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen criticized, that Wolff found “surprising parallelism” of evolution and creation.

One of of the main concerns is religious freedom, guaranteed by Hessen’s constitution, which allows for parents to exclude their children from religious education, while biology class is mandatory.

Comment:
“Holy crap!”. Quite literary.
What on earth is happening? Not only do we have to cope with people passing scary new laws cutting away on our civil liberties, NO, now we already have to watch out for the right-wing religious extremists.
I know why I dislike any party that has “Christian” in it’s name (CDU = Christian Democratic Union).

Up to now I always started laughing when I heard of the “Intelligent Design” stuff going on in the United States, but suddenly all fun is gone, they arrived on our doorstep.

Religious points of view already covered by classes

I don’t even get how one can get that weird idea of putting creationism into biology class. We already have a class for that, it’s called religious education. We even go so far as to have separate classes for catholics and protestants, and quite often even an ethics class that gives an overview of all major religious and belive systems. ISN’T THIS ENOUGH?

Wolff’s argumentation flawed

I was arguing about this topic with flowpass, who studied theology for several years.
He instantly started laughing, pointing out that Wolff’s argumentation is totally flawed.
“Science tries to research,” says flowpass, “and theology is not about interpretation and questions of meaning but about GOD.”
He further says: “It’s pretty bad how one [tries] using analogies and is TOTALLY off getting everything wrong.”

Wolff not in tune with the current position of the church

As an interesting fact on the side, I should mention that Karin Wolff recently made known she’s lesbian (German source).
Quite a mix.
Here’s a very “cautious” statement of pope Benedict XVI :

Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts “as a serious depravity… (cf. Rom 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:10; 1 Tim 1:10).
This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.
[...]
Nonetheless, according to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.
Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided”.(7)
They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity.(8)
The homosexual inclination is however “objectively disordered”(9) and homosexual practices are “sins gravely contrary to chastity”.(10)

Maybe someone is trying to score points by pushing creationism to make up for other “anomalies” (Quoting the pope).

Well, I have no problems, whatsoever, with homosexuals, to each their own.
But I DO have a problem with religious zealots.

I sincerely hope that this proposal won’t fall on fertile ground.
One reaps what he sows.