Rosio Pavoris

When I was in the Fnac today, I noticed that in their tiny science section, on the same shelf as Richard Dawkins’ books (right next to them, in fact, even though they should’ve been further to the right to be properly alphabetically sorted), there were a few copies of this book:

“Schitterend Ongeluk of Sporen van Ontwerp?”, to the people who don’t speak Dutch, means “Magnificent Accident or Traces of Design?”. Yes, it’s about Intelligent Design creationism. And no, it’s not critical of it.
If the title is any indication, it just repeats the old canard that evolution happens by pure chance. No doubt the hurricane-in-a-scrapyard analogy is in there somewhere as well.

So why do I care? People write about ID and creationism all the time, don’t they?
Well, no, they don’t. Not in (most of) Europe, anyway. Creationism really is overwhelmingly a US-specific problem.

The main writer, Cees Dekker, is a Dutch teacher at the Technical University of Delft. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that he isn’t a biologist: he’s a physicist and an engineer. He does apparently specialise in molecular biophysics, though. (The other two authors aren’t even on Wikipedia; not even the Dutch version.)
The Netherlands does have a notoriously backward Bible Belt (de Bijbelgordel; still nothing compared to the US Bible Belt, of course), and while neither Delft nor Dekker’s native Groningen are in it, if any European country had to produce something like this, I’m not too surprised it would be the Netherlands. Other suitable candidates include the UK and the Mediterranean countries.

The fact that the Fnac would think the book is important enough to import is worrying, but again, not too surprising considering the very alarming thing Dutchiepedia told me:

Voor de publicatie van dit boek had Maria van der Hoeven, Nederlands minister van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap een gesprek met Cees Dekker, en schreef in haar weblog naar aanleiding hiervan onder meer: “Als we erin slagen om wetenschappers van verschillende geloofsrichtingen met elkaar te verbinden, kan het [Intelligent design] uiteindelijk misschien zelfs wel worden toegepast op scholen en in lessen.” Maria van der Hoeven beoogde daarmee een debat over intelligent design te laten voeren tussen wetenschappers en het onderwijsveld. Naar aanleiding van de betreffende tekst op de weblog werden zelfs Kamervragen gesteld.

Translated: Maria van der Hoeven, the former Dutch Minister of Eduction, Culture, and Science, talked to Dekker, and wrote on her blog, among other things: “If we succeed in connecting scientists of various religious traditions, it [Intelligent Design] may eventually even be applied in schools and in classes.”
Apparently the blog entry generated some commotion, and she further clarified her position later on, confirming that she was indeed saying what she was saying.
Van der Hoeven is a member of the Christen Democratisch Appèl, which is (not surprisingly) a Christian Democratic party (like Belgium’s CD&V; also like the CD&V, it’s centrist-conservative). It’s also the Netherlands’ majority party, and it’s actually quite moderate. Van der Hoeven herself is Catholic, though of course the Vatican’s stance on evolution changes with the wind.

Van der Hoeven was predictably and fortunately shouted down, but it’s still quite frightening that it could come to this as nearby as Dutchieland.
Add to that most of the comments on this post, and the future of the Netherlands (and, by extension, Belgium) isn’t looking too promising. I don’t want to have to move to Sweden.

At least Van der Hoeven has been replaced with Ronald Plasterk now, who is a molecular geneticist, an atheist, and a vocal opponent of ID creationism.

(If you speak Dutch, there’s a good review of Schitterend Ongeluk here.)