The Church supports Darwin

What if the Church supported Darwin's theory of evolution, especially after the works of Champollion (decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs) and Hutton (father of modern geology) proved that Earth is older that the six millenia many read out of the Bible?
Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs and could proof that the Egyptian civilizations was older than the time many thought that the Deluge happened. Hutton could proof that geological processes are very slow and thus Earth had to be created long before 5508 BC (the year calculated out of the Bible).
(BTW the Big Bang theory was developed by Abbé Georges Edouard Lemaître, a roman catholic abbot.)
 
Do you mean the Anglican Church (Darwin was British), or the Roman Catholic Church? If the latter, that could make his life in England less comfortable.

If Darwin manages to charm Queen Victoria, she could certainly influence the Anglican Church in that direction.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Many in the church did support Darwin. There was no great controversy when he was buried in Westminster Abbey, after all.
 
Did they (the churches and not individual christians) really support his theory at the time he published it? Because if they did, we would not have those stupid, ignorant creationists, who do not realize that their 'theory' contradicts all scientific knowledge.
 
Did they (the churches and not individual christians) really support his theory at the time he published it? Because if they did, we would not have those stupid, ignorant creationists, who do not realize that their 'theory' contradicts all scientific knowledge.

The Catholic Church never had a position on it, until the eventually decided to support it.

And on the "stupid, ignorant creationists", faith and science do not contradict, when they do it is bad faith or bad science, as said by a catholic priest. So guess which one they have :)
 
You wish for the Catholics to be militantly active in their support? I suppose they could have a council go over what aspects they find suspect, and invite Mister Charles Darwin and Father Gregor Mendel.
 
Did they (the churches and not individual christians) really support his theory at the time he published it? Because if they did, we would not have those stupid, ignorant creationists, who do not realize that their 'theory' contradicts all scientific knowledge.

As long as a literal reading of the Bible says God made the world in 7 days, there will be people who insist that Young-Earth creationism is a fundamental tenet of Christianity.

And, the Theory of Evolution simply was not going to be accepted by churches right away: when Darwin proposed it, it not only directly contradicted the Bible and church viewpoints, but was also based on some fairly equivocal evidence. It wouldn't even win over the scientific community for several decades after The Origin of Species. It's just too big a cultural and philosophical shift to realistically expect on such a short time frame. At least give them a decade or two to make the transition.
 
Haven't the majority of the anti-evolution people come from Protestant sects, though?

Might just be on a more local basis, as I don't think single Protestant sects have majorities in most areas. Apparently though there was some schism of Christian groups that had some radio and television stations when they were ordered to focus on homosexuality and abortion and to not touch the subject of helping the poor. Lots of Muslims, Hindus, and Jews seem to believe in creationism, though many would be evolutionists of sorts so long as it is not seen as automatically contradicting their other beliefs.
 
As others have pointed out, the (Catholic) Church has never opposed evolution. You could have them actively support the theory, but I doubt Darwin is going to be pursuing their patronage.

Plus, it might just turn a lot of Protestants against the idea.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
Haven't the majority of the anti-evolution people come from Protestant sects, though?

Mostly *American* protestant denominations, and has it's roots in the American Presbyterian Church in 1910 ("The Five Fundamentals" - the foundation of Fundamentalism).
 
I don't think the Roman Catholic Church ever rejected evolution, certainly not in the manner that its Protestant rivals did (and still do).
 
'Church' does not mean Roman Catholic Church but can stand for any organized denomination and not for individual members of any denomination. 'Church' can stand for a German regional church even if single members or congregations have a different view. For the USA that means that the 'Church' could stand for the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA or just for a single denomination.
 
You wish for the Catholics to be militantly active in their support? I suppose they could have a council go over what aspects they find suspect, and invite Mister Charles Darwin and Father Gregor Mendel.

Mendel developed the theory of genetics after reading Darwin. I don't think it would be that hard to have Darwin read Mendel and incorporate some of his thinking.
 
Mendel disagreed with Darwin over certain aspects, while I do not believe I have ever read of Darwin's work inspiring Mendel's experiments, which he had begun years before Darwin's work was published. I do not believe that Darwin held his work to be fact but to be theory, as in it might not all be correct. If some way was made for them to contact each other and somehow know about the works of the other, it could set a nice precedent which would split up the different areas of evolutionary thought into Darwinism, Mendelism, and others, with the joined and editted works of many being combined into an official compidium that would be the holy book of evolution. To be updated each five years, with little palm books for sidebranches.
 
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