Pope John Paul II (1996) affirmed evolutionary theory in his message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, but rejected it for the human soul, which he saw as the result of a separate, special creation.
The Church of England publicly endorsed evolutionary theory (e.g., M. Brown 2008), including an apology to Charles Darwin for its initial rejection of his theory.
That was very condescending.
And ignorant too! Darwin was a dud.
Evolution is a fact, organisms adapt and evolve, or go extinct. The theory of evolution refers to the mechanisms and means of evolution.
Evolution is religion.
Neo-Darwinism is a secular creation theory (myth actually) that does not fit the evidence (it is radically at odds with the fossil record) and is not even falsifiable (according to no less an expert than Karl Popper). In fact, the concept of "survival of the fittest" is essentially a tautology with approximately zero explanatory power. Micro-evolution (small variations over time) is well established. But that's not where the action is. Neo-Darwinian Creationists think they can extrapolate from micro-evolution as establishing proof of macro-evolution, but it doesn't work because everything we know about biology, genetics, species and speciation tells us that no matter how we try to change them (to say nothing of nature) fruit flys remain fruit flys, dogs remain dogs, cats remain cats and finches remain finches.
