Which Christian denominations won't accept Darwinism?

[Estro Felino]

I started this thread also to clarify the official position of the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Ratzinger defends theistic evolution, the reconciliation between science and religion already held by Catholics. In discussing evolution, he writes that "The process itself is rational despite the mistakes and confusion as it goes through a narrow corridor choosing a few positive mutations and using low probability.... This ... inevitably leads to a question that goes beyond science.... Where did this rationality come from?" to which he answers that it comes from the "creative reason" of God.

Well..through this twisted speech actually he confirms that most genetic mutations are random and negative, so all the living beings evolve through adaptation (narrow corridor).
The conclusion has a very ambiguous implication: he defines the process rational...even if his premise tells clearly that it deals with something spontaneous and chaotic....certainly creative...but not rational.

There is no doubt the Vatican bowed to Darwinism. The Anglican Church did too.
What about Protestants?

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Just a question...
Does Darwinism mean evolution in your mind, or is there a distinction?

 

[exchemist]

I started this thread also to clarify the official position of the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Ratzinger defends theistic evolution, the reconciliation between science and religion already held by Catholics. In discussing evolution, he writes that "The process itself is rational despite the mistakes and confusion as it goes through a narrow corridor choosing a few positive mutations and using low probability.... This ... inevitably leads to a question that goes beyond science.... Where did this rationality come from?" to which he answers that it comes from the "creative reason" of God.

Well..through this twisted speech actually he confirms that most genetic mutations are random and negative, so all the living beings evolve through adaptation (narrow corridor).
The conclusion has a very ambiguous implication: he defines the process rational...even if his premise tells clearly that it deals with something spontaneous and chaotic....certainly creative...but not rational.

There is no doubt the Vatican bowed to Darwinism. The Anglican Church did too.
What about Protestants?

Anglicans are Protestants. Furthermore so are Methodists, the Church of Scotland, American Episcopalians, none of whom has difficulty with the science of the origin of life or geology.

This whole denial of "Darwin", which is usually shorthand for denial of any science where it conflicts with the literal words of the bible, is to a large extent a 20th century invention of the Seventh Day Adventists, an obscure and extreme sect in N America. They have been successful in promoting their ridiculous ideas about the bible and, by making a lot of noise, creating the impression that this is what all Protestants think. It's nonsense.

Pope Benedict is simply repeating the standard and totally uncontroversial view that the laws of nature are part of God's creation and so the unfolding of natural processes in accordance with those laws is also God's creation. This is how churchmen have reconciled their faith to the march of science for at least 150 years now.

In other words, no need for supernatural tinkering to suspend the laws of nature as it goes along, which is what creationists, including IDers maintain (without any evidence).

 

[Estro Felino]

Just a question...
Does Darwinism mean evolution in your mind, or is there a distinction?

I used the term Darwinism on purpose to specify that the RCC acknowledges that:

- Random genetic mutations occur because of DNA replication errors, and recombination (crossing over)

- Evolution takes place when these mutations produce an alteration of the frequency of the alleles from a generation to the other…due to natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow

- Speciation is the result of this process…that is, the result of successful adaptation…that implies the extinction of countless other species.


Unfortunately there are too many Christians who declare themselves evolutionists but affirm the presence of a Supervisor-God who controls these millennial processes.

 

[Estro Felino]

Anglicans are Protestants. .

An Anglican Priest: Anglicanism: Protestant or Catholic?

 

[exchemist]

An Anglican Priest: Anglicanism: Protestant or Catholic?

Protestant. Definitely.

Anglicans subscribe - at least officially - to the "Thirty-Nine Articles", which are explicitly Protestant, containing as they do a repudiation of certain key Catholic doctrines, most notably Purgatory, Transubstantiation and justification by works as well as by faith. Justification by faith alone was a specifically Protestant concept and the subject of fierce dispute at the time of the Reformation, so the Anglican choice to embrace it is a deliberate sign of embracing Protestantism.

Anglicans Online | The Thirty-Nine Articles

Your link is to an Anglo-Catholic priest, explaining the thinking of Anglo-Catholics. It is true that they get pretty close to Catholicism in most respects, but they are pushing the edge of the 39 Articles envelope, at one end of a wide spectrum of practice within Anglicanism.

 

[Deeje]

There is no doubt the Vatican bowed to Darwinism. The Anglican Church did too.
What about Protestants?

JW's don't accept Darwinism.....but we can't accept YEC either. We see creation as a slow and deliberate process, over eons of time. We don't see the creative days as literal 24 hr periods but as creative epochs with no random chance mutations involved in the process at all. We see direct creation by God just as Genesis describes it. Sentient life began in the oceans and the last lifeform to appear, was man.

The way we interpret Genesis allows us to keep what true and provable science knows, without discounting what the Bible says. We can accept both....without compromise.

 

[Jumi]

Evangelical lutherans mostly accept evolution as true. The way I hear it, it's more in the US where protestants, the so called evangelicals don't accept it?

 

[Estro Felino]

Protestant. Definitely.

Anglicans subscribe - at least officially - to the "Thirty-Nine Articles", which are explicitly Protestant, containing as they do a repudiation of certain key Catholic doctrines, most notably Purgatory, Transubstantiation and justification by works as well as by faith. Justification by faith alone was a specifically Protestant concept and the subject of fierce dispute at the time of the Reformation, so the Anglican choice to embrace it is a deliberate sign of embracing Protestantism.

Anglicans Online | The Thirty-Nine Articles

Your link is to an Anglo-Catholic priest, explaining the thinking of Anglo-Catholics. It is true that they get pretty close to Catholicism in most respects, but they are pushing the edge of the 39 Articles envelope, at one end of a wide spectrum of practice within Anglicanism.

That's a very good point. Nevertheless you have to explain me why the creators of this forum put Anglicanism in a separated section , and not together with other Protestant denominations.
Christianity DIR

 

[exchemist]

That's a very good point. Nevertheless you have to explain me why the creators of this forum put Anglicanism in a separated section , and not together with other Protestant denominations.
Christianity DIR

I have to say I had not realised they had done that!

I suppose it is fair to say that Anglicanism was a very English invention, aimed at compromise and keeping on board as any people as possible without making too much fuss, given the huge conflagrations and bloodshed in Europe over religion at the time. I get the feeling, looking at how the 39 Articles are formulated, that they left as much "constructive ambiguity" as they could.

And it is true that my perspective is perforce an English Catholic one: I notice the things that are different about Anglican teaching compared to the Catholic teaching I was brought up with. (My mother was a practising Anglican and my father a convert to Catholicism, so I was brought up Catholic, but with awareness of Anglicans.) And I am sensitive to the anti-Catholicsim which used to pervade the Anglican church, traces of which remain even today. So to me it appears Protestant.

Perhaps to a Baptist, say, or a Calvinist, Anglicanism looks rather Catholic!

 

[Kirran]

The way we interpret Genesis allows us to keep what true and provable science knows, without discounting what the Bible says. We can accept both....without compromise.

How do you decide what scientific findings are 'true and provable'?

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

There is no doubt the Vatican bowed to Darwinism. The Anglican Church did too.
What about Protestants?

The Vatican already learned its lesson when it didn't bow down to Galileoism.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

I used the term Darwinism on purpose to specify that the RCC acknowledges that:

- Random genetic mutations occur because of DNA replication errors, and recombination (crossing over)

- Evolution takes place when these mutations produce an alteration of the frequency of the alleles from a generation to the other…due to natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow

- Speciation is the result of this process…that is, the result of successful adaptation…that implies the extinction of countless other species.

That is the theory of evolution. So why call it Darwinism? If someone points to microorganisms as the cause of infectious disease do we call that Kochism? If someone says that gravity bends spacetime do we call that Einsteinism?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Protestant. Definitely.

Anglicans subscribe - at least officially - to the "Thirty-Nine Articles", which are explicitly Protestant, containing as they do a repudiation of certain key Catholic doctrines, most notably Purgatory, Transubstantiation and justification by works as well as by faith. Justification by faith alone was a specifically Protestant concept and the subject of fierce dispute at the time of the Reformation, so the Anglican choice to embrace it is a deliberate sign of embracing Protestantism.

Anglicans Online | The Thirty-Nine Articles

Your link is to an Anglo-Catholic priest, explaining the thinking of Anglo-Catholics. It is true that they get pretty close to Catholicism in most respects, but they are pushing the edge of the 39 Articles envelope, at one end of a wide spectrum of practice within Anglicanism.

I think the problem is that "Protestant or Catholic" may be a false dichotomy. There are groups that are called "Protestant" by Catholics and they have many agreements with other churches that are Protestant, but since their sects predate Protestantism they tend to dislike that label. The Anglican split from Catholicism was a different event than Luther's Reformation so for that reason many Anglicans do not consider themselves Protestant.

I have no say in this fight so I will not say either is wrong, but I can appreciate the arguments of both sides.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That is the theory of evolution. So why call it Darwinism? If someone points to microorganisms as the cause of infectious disease do we call that Kochism? If someone says that gravity bends spacetime do we call that Einsteinism?

It is easier to demonize if one can identify the "bad guy".

 

[Subduction Zone]

Evangelical lutherans mostly accept evolution as true. The way I hear it, it's more in the US where protestants, the so called evangelicals don't accept it?

Yes the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is neutral on it. That sect was formed in 1988 by combing the ALC, the LCA, and the AELC. I can't remember if my family was ALC or LCA when I was growing up. The differences between those two sects at least was almost non-existent.

The Missouri Synod on the other hand is a creationist synod.

Those are the two biggies of Lutheranism in the U.S.. I do not know the dogma of other sects.

 

[Estro Felino]

The Vatican already learned its lesson when it didn't bow down to Galileoism.

lol...they're trying to redeem themselves

That is the theory of evolution. So why call it Darwinism? If someone points to microorganisms as the cause of infectious disease do we call that Kochism? If someone says that gravity bends spacetime do we call that Einsteinism?

because...unfortunately...so many Christians develop their own personal version of evolution, by affirming the absurdest things, like for example, that speciation is the result of positive genetic mutations...or that genetic drift is false....it's a ID in disguise.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

because...unfortunately...so many Christians develop their own personal version of evolution, by affirming the absurdest things, like for example, that speciation is the result of positive genetic mutations...or that genetic drift is false....it's a ID in disguise.

How is that "Darwinism"? If it is their own personal theory, then shouldn't it be named after the person proposing it at least?

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

It is easier to demonize if one can identify the "bad guy".

Here is a very recent and interesting article written by Ken Miller:

On "Darwinism"

 

[exchemist]

I think the problem is that "Protestant or Catholic" may be a false dichotomy. There are groups that are called "Protestant" by Catholics and they have many agreements with other churches that are Protestant, but since their sects predate Protestantism they tend to dislike that label. The Anglican split from Catholicism was a different event than Luther's Reformation so for that reason many Anglicans do not consider themselves Protestant.

I have no say in this fight so I will not say either is wrong, but I can appreciate the arguments of both sides.

I can see something in what you say, but the Anglican split from Rome was associated with the fevered arguments of the Reformation, even if Henry's motivation was more prosaic and political. Certainly by the time the 39 Articles were written, as you can see from reading them, the concern was with delineating where the Church of England stood in respect of the theological disputes. Its adoption of sola fide is straight from Luther.

I certainly acknowledge, though, that many Anglicans towards the Catholic end of the Anglican spectrum like to play down the 39 articles nowadays. It tends, I think, to be the evangelical wing that likes to quote them.