Charles Darwin, 1879

In this the 150th anniversary year of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (and the 200th anniversary year of his birth), it is worth returning to that era of profound discovery and re-examining some of the controversies and earlier evolutionary theories begotten in the years just preceding its publication.

Today (and ever since Origin), the core, controversial idea of evolution tends to be rather simplistically summed up as: “We are descended from apes”. Of course, Darwinism, as it came to be called, was far more than this simplistic distillation. Even still, Darwin’s description of evolution as “descent with modification”, as well as his positing of vast geologic time scales, the agencies of natural and sexual selection, and a common ancestry to all living creatures, were not the fundamental, conceptual causes of the controversies.

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This week, the doubtful naysayers may have been proven wrong: the Vatican has lifted a centuries-old veil of official hostility towards and denial of the Theory of Evolution to admit it was actually compatible with the Bible.

The Church of England, as the Anglican Church is officially known in the UK, wasn’t going to be left behind and issued their own confirmation that Darwin’s theory never conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation.

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