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Catholic concern about evolution has always been very largely concerned with the implications of evolutionary theory for the origin of the human species; even by 1859, a literal reading of the Book of Genesis had long been undermined by developments in geology and other fields. [12]
The position of the Roman Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has changed over the last two centuries from a large period of no official mention, to a statement of neutrality in the early-1950s, to limited guarded acceptance in recent years, rejecting the materialistic and reductionist philosophies behind it, and insisting that the human ...
In October 1996, Pope John Paul II outlined the Catholic view of evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, saying that the Church holds that evolution is "more than a hypothesis," it is a well-accepted theory of science and that the human body evolved according to natural processes, while the human soul is the creation of God. [127]
The Roman Catholic Church now explicitly accepts the theory of evolution, [5] (albeit with most conservatives and traditionalists within the Church in dissent), [citation needed] as do Anglican scholars such as John Polkinghorne, arguing that evolution is one of the principles through which God created living beings.
Rejection of evolution by religious groups, sometimes called creation–evolution controversy, has a long history. [1] In response to theories developed by scientists, some religious individuals and organizations question the legitimacy of scientific ideas that contradicted the young earth pseudoscientific interpretation of the creation account in Genesis.
Recurring cultural, political, and theological rejection of evolution by religious groups [a] exists regarding the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life. In accordance with creationism, species were once widely believed to be fixed products of divine creation, but since the mid-19th century, evolution by natural selection has been established by the scientific community as an ...
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
"Since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, the attitude of the Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has slowly been refined. Early contributions to the development of evolutionary theory were made by Catholic scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel."