History of the creation–evolution controversy
[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.
Discoveries in geology led to various theories of an ancient earth, and fossils showing past extinctions prompted early ideas of evolution, which were particularly controversial in England, where both the natural world and the hierarchical social order were thought to be fixed by God's will.
[3] However, radical Quakers, Unitarians and Baptists welcomed the book's ideas of "natural law" as supporting their struggle to overthrow the privileges of the Church of England.
[6] The controversy was fueled in part by one of Darwin's most vigorous promoters, Thomas Henry Huxley, who opined that Christianity is a "...compound of some of the best and some of the worst elements of Paganism and Judaism, moulded in practice by the innate character of certain people of the Western world..."[7] Perhaps the most uncompromising of the evolutionary philosophers was Ernst Haeckel, who dogmatically affirmed that nothing spiritual exists.
[9] After 1875, it became clear that the majority of naturalists embraced evolution, and a sizable minority of these Protestant contributors rejected Darwin's theory because it called into question the veracity of Scriptures.
[14] Initial reactions in the United States matched the developments in Britain, and when Alfred Russel Wallace went there for a lecture tour in 1886–1887 his explanations of "Darwinism" were welcomed without any problems, but attitudes changed after the First World War.
[15] The controversy became political when public schools began teaching that man evolved from earlier forms of life per Darwin's theory of natural selection.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that banning the teaching of specific theories contravened the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution because their primary purpose was religious.
[23] Membership in churches favoring increasingly literal interpretations of Scripture continued to rise, with the Southern Baptist Convention and Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod outpacing all other denominations.
[33]Some point to the fact that before ordination all Catholic priests have to study the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, who subscribed to an Aristotelian view of evolution, in which he posits that animal species evolve by means of mutations and natural law.
the inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation - its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation.
Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the "beginning": creation, fall, and promise of salvation.
More accommodating viewpoints, held by mainstream churches and some scientists, consider science and religion to be separate categories of thought, which ask fundamentally different questions about reality and posit different avenues for investigating it.
[40] In 1981, Harold J. Morowitz (Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University) testified in the case of McLean v. Arkansas that dealt with “Balanced Treatment of Creation-Science and Evolution Science in the Public Schools.”[41] The argument had been made in support of creationism that the second law of thermodynamics precludes biogenesis by a natural process; therefore there was a requirement for supernatural events.
"[43] Before the trial began, U.S. President George W. Bush commented endorsing the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about.
