by Derek Scally in Berlin
Saturday`s Irish Times (Ireland), page 11
July 21, 2007
A German minister for culture and education has come under fire for suggesting that the biblical story of creation should be discussed in school science classes.
The suggestion by Karin Wolff, culture minister in the western state of Hesse, appears to call into question the separation of church and state in German schools and has caused alarm among leftwing politicians.
They are wary of the “creationist” teachings of some evangelical Christians in the US, in particular the idea of “intelligent design”: that many life forms have elements too complex to be explained by the random process of evolution, proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, and must instead have had a creator.
Ms Wolff, a theologian and former religion teacher, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that she saw “no contradiction between biological evolution and the biblical explanation for origin of the world”.
