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Originally Posted by Justsomeguy
okay. That is the catholic church though. What about christians?
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Well, Catholics ARE Christians, but anyway...
http://www.calvin.edu/~lhaarsma/Evol...SAConf2003.pdf
I have not read this. It is a 25 page paper by an assistant professor of physics at Calvin College (which I assume is Calvinist). Glancing over it, it seems to support the view that God and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
There is a collection of information <a href="http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/2027_statements_from_religious_orga_1_26_2001.asp">here</a>. Some key points of interest regarding Christian religions:
Episcopal:
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the [1982] 67th General Convention [of the Episcopal Church] affirm[s] the glorious ability of God to create in any manner, whether men understand it or not, and in this affirmation reject the limited insight and rigid dogmatism of the "Creationist" movement ... [and] that the Presiding Bishop appoint a Committee to organize Episcopalians and to cooperate with all Episcopalians to encourage actively their state legislators not to be persuaded by arguments and pressures of the "Creationists" into legislating any form of "balanced treatment" laws or any law requiring the teaching of "Creation-science."
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Catholic:
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Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth, it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. The sacred book likewise wishes to tell men that the world was not created as the seat of the gods, as was taught by other cosmogonies and cosmologies, but was rather created for the service of man and the glory of God. Any other teaching about the origin and makeup of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible
Pope John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 1981
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United Presbyterian Church of USA, 1982:
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the imposition of a fundamentalist viewpoint about the interpretation of Biblical literature -- where every word is taken with uniform literalness and becomes an absolute authority on all matters, whether moral, religious, political, historical or scientific -- is in conflict with the perspective on Biblical interpretation characteristically maintained by Biblical scholars and theological schools in the mainstream of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism and Judaism. Such scholars find that the scientific theory of evolution does not conflict with their interpretation of the origins of life found in Biblical literature.
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Furthermore, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America states <a href="http://www.elca.org/co/faq/evolution.html">on their webpage</a> that:
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we subscribe to the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation, so we believe God created the universe and all that is therein, only not necessarily in six 24-hour days, and that he may actually have used evolution in the process of creation.
"Historical criticism" is an understanding that the Bible must be understood in the cultural context of the times in which it was written.
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Presbyterian Church (USA), in a <a href="http://www.pcusa.org/theologyandworship/science/evolution.htm">theological statement</a> from 1969 stated:
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Neither Scripture, our Confession of Faith, nor our Catechisms, teach the Creation of man by the direct and immediate acts of God so as to exclude the possibility of evolution as a scientific theory ... We conclude that the true relation between the evolutionary theory and the Bible is that of non-contradiction
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Furthermore, internal <a href="http://www.pcusa.org/research/monday/evolve2.htm">research</a> of Presbyterians showed that the large majority of those who do not support the co-existence of evolution and God as creator are people who are less qualified to make such evaluations in the first place, not to mention that the group with the least support for compatibility of evolution and theistic creation still had 60% of people supporting it:
Anyway, I think you get the idea
