EvoKE Project Pushes European Public to Accept Evolution – Discovery Institute

A recent article in Nature Ecology &Evolution, Public literacy in evolution, discusses a newly launched project to push evolution on the European public. Called EvoKE, or EVOlutionary Knowledge for Everyone, the projects main concern isto find ways to increase European citizens acceptance and understanding of evolution. In multiple places, the article quotes EvoKE leaders who areworriedabout the level of acceptance of evolution. The language is telling:

In case you missed it, EvoKE spends a lot of time frettingabout whether the European public accepts evolution. They seem particularly distressedabout those movements thatdo not encourage people to accept evolution.

In response, theproject aims to get political. The last paragraph states:

In 2007, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted the resolution: The dangers of creationism in education. This resolution urged state members to notably defend and promote scientific knowledge, and to promote evolution knowledge as a fundamental scientific theory in school curricula. However, we are not aware of an EU policy agenda regarding the teaching of evolution. Support for EvoKE and the projects that came out of the meeting would certainly be a way for the European Council to be more proactive on those issues.

We reported on the above-mentioned 2007 resolution, adopted by the Council of Europe, at the time. Memorably, it stated that teaching intelligent design may entail a threat to human rights. Specifically, that resolutiondeclared:

To summarize, the resolution claims that intelligent design is a form of creationism thatis dangerous, anti-science, promotes deception, is religiously motivated. It says that teaching these ideas amounts toa serious attack on human rights, ofutmost virulence on human rights and one of the most serious threats to human rights and civic rights. The resolution goes on for 105 paragraphs this way.Read the whole thing.

And remember, thisrabidly intolerant screed isnt arandomblog rant from some intolerant undergraduate atheist student club. It was adopted as a resolution by the Council of Europe, a quasi-governmental body and would-be protector of human rights. According to the article in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the EvoKE project wants to lobby the European Union a true governmental body with real lawmaking powers to draw inspiration from this resolution and start making policy.

What kind of policy could come from such a declaration, standing directly against freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of scientific inquiry? The resolutions claims that intelligent design could pose a threat to human rightssounds like a thinly veiled wishto criminalize or legally inhibit ID advocacy. Is this how EvoKE aims to encourage Europe to accept evolution by declaring that alternative views pose a threat to human rights? Would they threaten dissenters with legal retaliationfor being anti-science?

Oppressive regimeshave tried gambits like that in the past.One hopes that EvoKE would aim to persuade the public with reason and evidence, not through the force of the law. But on any objective showing, reason and evidence are on the side of intelligent design, notevolution. Maybe thats why, it seems, some are tempted by harsher remedies.

Image: Europe from space, by Smh232 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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EvoKE Project Pushes European Public to Accept Evolution - Discovery Institute