Disf Information

We are a group of scientists from the most diverse scientific and cultural backgrounds. We share the belief that religious or metaphysical ways of thinking should not, a priori, interfere in the ordinary practice of science. However, we also consider that it is legitimate, indeed necessary, to reflect, a posteriori, on the philosophical, ethical and metaphysical implications of scientific discoveries and theories. Indeed, to fall short of doing so would be to isolate many scientists and science itself from a large proportion of society. It is a debate which includes the most diverse opinions. Whereas Richard Dawkins has famously asserted that it has been possible to live as a perfectly fulfilled atheist since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, Arthur Eddington, on the other hand, has written that since 1926, the year of the synthesis in quantum mechanics, intelligent people can once again believe in the existence of God. But there is no shortage of biologists who affirm the compatibility of Darwinism with a belief in a creator, and physicists for whom quantum physics in no way diminishes the credibility of materialism. Today the legitimacy of this debate in France as in the USA and other countries faces two types of confusion. These are linked to the intense media attention that has surrounded the so-called Intelligent Design movement. This movement transgresses the limits of science as it counts numerous creationists who deny some of the basic tenets of modern science. In addition the movement has an unhealthy political agenda of modifying science education in American schools. The first confusion is between creationists and those who completely accept the theory of evolution while submitting different hypotheses regarding its mechanisms, including the possibility of internal factors. The term creationist should only be used to describe those people who deny a common ancestor to all the main forms of life on earth or who deny that evolution led the original forms of life to present day beings. If ...