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Right in time for Christmas last year, Germans got a dubious “present”: A debate on the issue of “intelligent design” vs. evolution. “A small group in Germany,” reported Deutsche Welle, “believes that an ‘intelligent designer’ created life, is claiming that evolution is not the scientific explanation for our planet's existence.”
“Intelligent design” has been a hot public topic in the U.S. for several years now, and the debate has gotten so heated at times that courts have had to intervene. But unlike some of the American “intelligent design” groups, Germany’s most vocal “intelligent design” advocates, Wort und Wissen (“Word and Knowledge”), so far are not trying to make creationism a part of the school curriculum. German educators don’t expect this debate to become “a major issue,” either.
Of course, several years ago, few Americans thought things could’ve gone as far as they did, too. In Germany and Europe generally, things are just getting warmed up – but they are warming up fast. Just in May, German chancellor Angela Merkel said that, “…God and the Christian belief should be included into the EU constitution” – a statement that could “potentially reopen one of the most bitter debates surrounding the drawing up of the document four years ago” (EUobserver).
One key ingredient for creationism to become a prominent topic in Germany seems already in place – namely, society’s growing polarization on the subject of religion. German scientists strongly oppose the “intelligent design” theory, calling Evolution - A Critical Textbook – a controversial book co-authored by the head of Wort und Wissen – "a successful piece of German neo-creationist propaganda.” Propaganda or not, but note the word "successful”: According to a recent survey, 38% of Germans “dispute evolution” as valid, which helps explain the book’s popularity.
It’s not the goal of this column to take sides in public discussions. As usual, when analyzing social trends, we don’t focus on “why?” as much as we do on “why here?” or “why now?” And we think it’s quite telling that, although Wort und Wissen has been around since the early 1980s, “public and media interest in its work has only developed recently.”
Why only recently? We think it has to do with the state of Germany’s social mood. It suffered from a major bear market in 2000-2003, as indicated by the losses in German stocks. In fact, stocks in other countries got hit hard back then as well, suggesting a global downshift in collective psychology. And with it, came polarization, a trait that intensifies in bear markets. As our own Elliott Wave Theorist (part of The European Financial Forecast Service) observed at the time,
“There is a moral polarity developing in the world. On one hand are the anything-goes amoralists and artists pushing the envelope, and on the other are the we-want-to-control-you moralists – religious, social and economic – and the soaring popularity of fundamentalist religion worldwide. Even creationism is making a comeback.”
From an Elliott Wave point of view, it’s also quite telling that it's religion that has become a source of the world’s growing polarization. Throughout history, religion always came to play a more prominent role during bear markets. And although the German DAX have rallied strongly for the past three years, notice that so far, it hasn’t broken above its 2000 high, indicating that the country’s social mood isn’t quite of the woods yet…