TruthBook Religious News Blog

Prominent scientists and leading religious figures have joined forces to call for an end to the fighting over Charles Darwin's legacy.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
09 Feb 2009

Ahead of the 200th anniversary of the pioneering naturalist's birth on Thursday, they warn that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it as a weapon with which to attack religion.

However, in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph, they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that now exists to back up Darwin's theory of how life on Earth has developed.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 people conducted by Theos, the religion think tank, found that half believe the theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of the natural world. One in three said they thought God created the Earth within the past 10,000 years.

The influential signatories of the letter include two Church of England bishops, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain and a member of the Evangelical Alliance, as well as Professor Lord Winston, the fertility pioneer, and Professor Sir Martin Evans, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

They write: "Evolution, we believe, has become caught in the crossfire of a religious battle in which Darwin himself had little personal interest.

"We respectfully encourage those who reject evolution to weigh the now overwhelming evidence, hugely strengthened by recent advances in genetics, which testifies to the theory's validity.

"At the same time, we respectfully ask those contemporary Darwinians who seem intent on using Darwin's theory as a vehicle for promoting an anti-theistic agenda to desist from doing so as they are, albeit unintentionally, turning people away from the theory.

"In this year of all years, we should be celebrating Darwin's great biological achievements and not fighting over his legacy as some kind of anti-theologian."

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, Martin Beckford, religion, science, Theos

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Saturday, March 22, 2008

Christ rose again, say 57 per cent in British poll

by Ed Beavan

MORE than half the British believe that Christ rose from the dead, a survey for the theology think tank Theos suggests.

In the think tank’s Easter survey, carried out on its behalf by ComRes, 57 per cent of respondents said that they believed Jesus had been executed by crucifixion and buried, and had risen from the dead. More than half of these (30 per cent of the total) believed in a bodily resurrection, while 27 per cent of the total believed that Jesus had risen in spirit form.

Asked about life after death, 44 per cent said that they believed their spirit would live on after death. Only nine per cent believed in a personal physical resurrection.

The survey found distinct differences between different age groups. Fifty-three per cent of 55- to 64-year-olds agreed that Jesus was the Son of God, compared with 29 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds.

Mr Woolley said: “The fact that younger people are less clear about what they believe than older generations reflects a more general rejection of the certainties of the past among that age group, whether religious or atheistic.”

The widespread belief in the soul’s escaping to heaven rather than in a physical resurrection suggested the influence of Plato rather than the Bible, he said.

The Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, said that the findings showed that people still cared about Jesus, and the confusion over the resurrection was “predictable”.

Labels: afterlife, Ed Beavan, Jesus, resurrection, Theos