What the papers say

摘要

Creationism rules On 19 April 2002, the Church Times reported that the responses on its forum website to the question 'Should we teach creationism alongside evolution theory?' were: yes, 39.6 percent; no, 47.2 percent; maybe, 13.2 percent. So over 50 percent of respondents - educated people, one assumes - were not against the teaching of creationism. Should we worry, or should we worry? But why? Creationism, which we in Britain have hitherto rather superiorly dismissed as an American (mainly)/Australian disease, may be catching on here at last. But why? According to Alan Smithers of the University of Liverpool, the reason is probably mainly 'the bleak picture of human existence that science provides. What it amounts to is threescore and 10 on an insignificant planet, from nowhere to nowhere. It is a truth that is very hard to bear, and it leaves everyone of us searching for meaning and purpose.' Of course, conventional religion once provided those, but no longer for most, who look elsewhere for something 'that humanises the world'. Science evidently does not do the job, despite, in this case, the vast body of evidence in favour of Darwinian evolution. Ironically, though, Darwin himself was a creationist before the Beagle expedition (Fig. 1). Recalling in later life his years as a theology student in Cambridge, he said: 'I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible.