Philosophy and Religion

According to a recent poll, every fifth German believes that God created man. Among the most radical opponents of the Darwinian theory of evolution in Germany too are the creationists. They accept the biblical story of creation literally or else at least see life as the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a higher power.

Heavenly tones, fanfares and hymns. Our view sweeps over a sterile landscape where fairytale-like buildings rise up. A gigantic snail’s shell symbolises the creation, a monstrous cube the fiery Last Judgement. At the centre lies the colossal body of a wooden ark, like an aircraft carrier. Behind all sorts of palaces and temples the skeleton of the Tower of Babel thrusts up into the sky. To the right and left, a glass-roofed Garden of Eden and a Roman amphitheatre; in between cinemas, the Old City of Jerusalem, parks, lakes and a roller-coaster to heaven and to hell. On the stone portal, “Genesisland” is emblazoned in graven letters, over which arches a shining rainbow.

History of creation as a theme park

The biblical Disneyland of Gian-Luca Carigiet can still be admired only as a 3D animation in the Internet. But for the pious Swiss management consultant the realisation of his plan is only a matter of time. The financing for the approximately 200 million-euro project, backed by the creationist association ProGenesis, appears to be assured. The only element lacking is an appropriate site for the 500,000 square metres theme park. Since the original plan to build it in the Rhine-Neckar area collapsed, the focus of Genesisland Inc. has shifted to the greater Berlin and Munich areas.

Carigiet’s original plan for a “time travel from creation to consummation” foundered on the massive opposition of the Evangelical Church of Baden-Württemberg. “Such a project only stands in the way of our communication of the faith,” says its specialist for world-views, Hansjörg Hemminger. He refers to an April 2008 “guide” issued by the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland / EKD) that drew a clear boundary to creationism. Together with the “new atheism”, which opposes the biblical belief in creation, creationism is there damned as an “error”.

Biblical frame of interpretation

The attitude of German Protestants to creationism is ambivalent. That can be clearly seen from a declaration of the Union of Evangelical Free Churches (Vereinigung Evangelischer Freikirchen / VEF), to which fourteen of the non-established Reformed congregations belong, with about 260,000 faithful. Its commissioner to the German federal government, Peter Jörgensen, plainly distances himself from the American fundamentalist evangelicals, who are increasingly gaining a foothold in Germany, but not from the creationist body of ideas that comes from the USA and the creationist demands on educational policy.

“Representatives of both evolutionary theory and of intelligent design have their place in the Free Churches,” says Jörgensen. “As the Union of Evangelical Free Churches, it is our opinion that to discredit the sciences from a religious point of view is inappropriate. But we also maintain that the reverse is equally inappropriate, namely to make a non-religious attitude the prerequisite for scientific convictions.”

The closeness pf the Free Churches to creationist ideas is proven by the web site of the Association of Evangelical Confessional Schools (Verband Evangelischer Bekenntnisschulen / VEBS), to which 70 schools belong nationwide. At present they teach 25,000 pupils and have found appeal with many unreligious middle-class families. Their teachers are instructed to orient their presentation of the subject matter “holistically within the biblical frame of interpretation”. In the Swiss “pro-Christian magazine” Factum, VEBS General Secretary Berthold Meier has expressed his conviction that a school whose creed is oriented to the word of God is downright obliged to discuss the alternative theories of creation.

Aid from science

A regular writer for Factum is Werner Gitt, retired Director of the Faculty of Information Technology of the Physical-Technical Federal Institute in Brunswick. An ardent controversialist for creationism, the voluntary service Elder of the evangelical Free Church congregation “Brunswick Free Church” has dedicated himself to (among other things) the study group “Word and Knowledge”, which is regarded as a forum for adherents of intelligent design, a scientifically arguing variant of creationism.

What makes this organisation attractive is that its most prominent representatives hail from the natural sciences, medicine and technology. Among them are Siegfried Scherer, Professor for Microbial Ecology at the Science Centre of the Technical University of Munich in Freising-Weihenstephan. Together with the biology teacher Reinhard Junker, Scherer wrote Evolution – ein kritisches Lehrbuch (i.e., Evolution – A Critical Textbook). Like Creatio – das Lehrbuch zur Schöpfungslehre (i.e., Creatio – Textbook for the Teaching of Creation), from the pen of certified biologist Alexander vom Stein, Scherer’s book is part of the curriculum of the Evangelical Confessional schools.

“Ideological evolutionism”?

Scherer has never made a secret of his own religious sentiments and his critical view of Darwinianism. “As a biologist, I am of the opinion that the central problems of evolutionary theory have still not been solved,” says the distinguished scientist whose special research lies in the areas of taxonomy and evolution. “I find it rather amazing that there are evolutionary biologists who categorically reject a fundamental scientific criticism of evolutionary theory.”

In Scherer’s view, “this fading out of argument, whatever its motivation, has ideological features. Evolutionary theory becomes evolutionism and is elevated not only to the rank of infallibility, but also to a sacrosanct status”.