Six Positions Within One Debate

Christian responses to the theory of evolution range across a spectrum this atlas records as documented positions rather than a single settled Christian view. Young Earth Creationism holds that Genesis describes a recent, literal six day creation and rejects the standard scientific chronology of the earth and universe. Old Earth Creationism accepts the ages given by modern geology and astronomy while still rejecting common descent, the claim that species share ancestry through evolutionary processes. Theistic Evolution, also called evolutionary creation, accepts the scientific account of evolution as the means through which a divinely governed creation unfolded, a position the Catholic Church has moved toward with increasing openness since permitting study of the evolutionary origin of the human body in the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, while continuing to teach that the human soul is directly and specially created by God.

Intelligent Design argues that specific features of biological life show evidence of design detectable by scientific method, without necessarily specifying a young earth, a position that has not been adopted as doctrine by any major religious body. Biblical Inerrancy as a controlling premise treats a particular reading of scriptural authority as the starting point from which a position on origins follows, while non-concordist and literary readings treat Genesis as making theological rather than scientific claims and read its creation narrative accordingly.