Like many people in France, I have heard about the controversy that currently takes place in the US about creation and what is called "Intelligent Design".
Of course, in the post-Christian society that is France, this kind of debate looks curious at best and more generally incredibly obsolete for the vast majority of people who think that Christian faith is a middle-aged superstition and a crutch for weak persons.
This "intelligent design" debate will not help ridding these prejudices and misconceptions: there is nothing intelligent in wasting energy in talking about subjects that are all but extremely peripheral to the core of the message that Christians should broadcast. There is nothing new in this kind of intellectual diversions: re-read what Paul has written to Titus about this, almost two millenniums ago.
Confronting science and faith is a sterile debate: they are both in different non-competing fields (the "how" and the "why") and both can benefit from each other. Can not faith be re-enforced by the beauty and the majesty of the discoveries made in the heart of the matter or at the borders of the known universe? Can not science benefit from a little consciousness when it comes to potentially dangerous discoveries?
And on the subject of what is taught to kids at school, I really think that there are more serious threats that weight on our children than hearing about the theory of evolution. Living in a fallen world is all about filtering, anyway!
