General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This anti-Catholic crap is getting to be annoying [View all]Hekate
(100,133 posts)There are many branches of Christianity. Mainstream Protestantism (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist) and Roman Catholicism are not by nature anti-science over the past 150 years or so, although their understanding of science has -- shall we say, "evolved." All-American fundamentalist Bible-thumpers who take the Bible literally and are too ignorant to even know that the Bible was written down by multiple authors in multiple centuries -- those are the people who tend to be anti-science.
Here's Wikipedia, for a start:
Catholic Church and evolution
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. For about 100 years, there was no authoritative pronouncement on the subject. In the 1950 encyclical Humani generis, Pope Pius XII confirmed that there is no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the theory of evolution, provided that Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation by God and not the product of purely material forces. Today, the Church's unofficial position is an example of theistic evolution, also known as evolutionary creation, stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins. Moreover, the Church teaches that the process of evolution is a planned and purpose-driven natural process, guided by God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution