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Theology and science

What is theology and science?

Theology and science is the academic field that studies how Christian faith meets the natural sciences: creation, evolution, cosmology, human origins, divine action and miracles. Most of its historians reject the old story of warfare between the two. Christians hold young-earth, old-earth, intelligent design and evolutionary positions, and most church statements deny any real conflict with science.

  • 62Sources
  • 16Traditions
  • 16Dated entries
  • 14Minutes

Study v1.1, 7 November 2026

Theology and science

At a glance

Why it matters for reading Scripture

Creation, evolution, cosmology and miracles. Christians hold young-earth, old-earth, design and evolutionary views, and most church statements deny any real conflict with science.

What the study found

The scientific consensus dates the universe at 13.8 billion years, the Earth at 4.54 billion and holds common descent; Christians hold young-earth, old-earth, design and evolutionary views, and most church statements deny real conflict.

Where traditions divide

They divide on the age of the Earth, common descent, a historical Adam and the Fall, death before sin, a global flood, and whether intelligent design is science.

How the traditions compare

  • Young-earth creationism

    Reads Genesis 1 and 2 as six consecutive days of twenty-four hours, with a recent creation and Adam and Eve created directly.

    Answers in Genesis holds about 4,000 years from creation to Christ, a global flood that laid down most fossil-bearing sediments, and no animal death, disease or disaster before Adam's sin. The Institute for Creation Research holds a "relatively recent creation of the earth and the universe", a worldwide flood, and created kinds within which only variation occurs.

    Sources1–2

  • Old-earth creationism

    Accepts the age of the universe and the Earth but rejects common descent, above all for humans, through the day-age, gap or progressive creation readings.

    Reasons to Believe, founded in 1986 by astrophysicist Hugh Ross, holds humans "distinct in kind from all other life".

    Sources3

  • Intelligent design

    A claim about inferring design, not a reading of Genesis: the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture holds that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause".

    It states no age of the Earth and does not hold common ancestry as such to be in "inherent conflict" with design, though its writers also criticize the tree of life.

    Sources4

  • Evolutionary creation

    BioLogos, founded by Francis Collins in 2009, holds evolution "the best scientific explanation we currently have for the diversity and similarities of all life on Earth" while taking the Bible as the inspired and authoritative word of God.

    It distinguishes its view from a deistic theistic evolution, affirming miracles, answered prayer and God's providence through natural processes.

    Sources5–6

  • Functional reading (cosmic temple)

    John Walton reads Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology about functions, with the cosmos a temple and the seven days its inauguration, so that the age of the Earth is not a question Genesis 1 answers.

    Young-earth writers reject such readings as accommodation to science.

    Sources17

  • Roman Catholic Church

    Accepts the evolution of the body while holding that "every spiritual soul is created immediately by God".

    The International Theological Commission's Communion and Stewardship (2004), a commission's study rather than a doctrinal definition, holds common descent "virtually certain" and says the emergence of the first humans "is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation". Pope Francis told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2014 that "Evolution in nature does not conflict with the notion of Creation".

    Sources8–10

  • Orthodox: Ecumenical Patriarchate

    The Ecumenical Patriarchate's For the Life of the World (2020) names as fideistic those forms of Christianity that refuse discoveries in geology, paleontology, evolutionary biology and genetics, rejects equally a scientism that reduces reality to matter, and urges Christians to promote scientific education and research.

    It is a social ethos document of one patriarchate, not a conciliar definition binding all Orthodox churches, and individual Orthodox writers differ on evolution.

    Sources11

  • Episcopal Church and Church of England

    The Episcopal Church in 1982 affirmed God's ability to create "in any manner", and Pew lists it among the churches that hold evolution compatible with faith.

    In 2008 the Church of England published an essay by Malcolm Brown telling Darwin that "the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you", which the church said was not a formal apology.

    Sources12–13

  • Presbyterian Church in America

    Its Creation Study Committee (2000) set out the calendar-day, day-age, framework and analogical-day views, and the Assembly adopted that such diversity "is acceptable as long as the full historicity of the creation account is accepted".

    The Westminster Confession, as quoted in PCA sources, says God created "in the space of six days".

    Sources14

  • Christian Reformed Church in North America

    In 1991 it rejected "all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God".

    Its Declaration F, which ruled out evolutionary forebears of humanity, was removed in 2010 as "contradictory and confusing", and in 2014 it asked its colleges to hold open conversations on creation, the fall, original sin and the atonement.

    Sources15

  • Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

    Its Brief Statement (1932) rejects the view that the world came into existence "through a process of evolution", and its 2004 convention rejected "macro, organic and Darwinian evolution, including theistic evolution".

    Its 2019 convention confessed creation "in six natural days" and that Adam's creation was a historical event.

    Sources16

  • United Methodist Church

    Its Book of Discipline states that "science's descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology".

    Sources17

  • Assemblies of God (United States)

    The position paper The Doctrine of Creation (2010, revised 2014) takes no position on the age of the Earth, rules out "any evolutionary theory, including theistic evolution/evolutionary creationism" that holds common ancestry, and affirms that Adam and Eve were real, historical persons.

    It speaks for the US fellowship, not for worldwide Pentecostalism.

    Sources18

  • Seventh-day Adventist Church

    Its General Conference Executive Committee endorsed "a literal, recent, six-day Creation" in 2004 and in 2010 reaffirmed that the days were "literal 24-hour days" and that the flood was global.

    In 2015 at San Antonio the church revised Fundamental Belief 6 to add "recent" and "six literal days", and it ties the literal days to the seventh-day Sabbath.

    Sources19–20

  • Jehovah's Witnesses

    Say they "disagree with Christian Fundamentalists and many creationists": the universe existed "for an indefinite time before the creative days began", and the days involved "considerable lengths of time".

    They hold that God did not use evolution and created basic "kinds".

    Sources21

  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

    Takes no position on the scientific theory of evolution, while teaching that all people are children of God created in his image.

    It says how human bodies came to be "have not been revealed", and gives the Earth's age as about 4.5 billion years.

    Sources22

How the field developed

  1. Medieval
    7 March 1277

    Bishop Étienne Tempier of Paris prohibits 219 theses taught in the arts faculty. Pierre Duhem later argued that the condemnation marked the birth of modern science, a view the Stanford entry says no one in the field now accepts.23

  2. Reformation
    March 1616

    Copernicus's De revolutionibus is "suspended until corrected", and Cardinal Bellarmine admonishes Galileo not to hold or defend the Copernican view; the details of the admonition remain disputed.24

  3. Reformation
    1633

    Galileo is convicted of "vehement suspicion of heresy" and made to abjure, and his imprisonment is commuted to house arrest. The Stanford entry stresses the political setting, the dispute over epistemic authority and the reading of Scripture.24

  4. Modern
    1713

    Newton adds the General Scholium to the Principia, arguing that the system of the sun, planets and comets "could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being".25

  5. Modern
    1859

    Darwin's On the Origin of Species appears, and responses are mixed from the start: Charles Kingsley writes to Darwin on 18 November that it is "just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that he created primal forms capable of self development".26

  6. Modern
    1925

    John Scopes is tried in Dayton, Tennessee, under the Butler Act, which barred teaching human evolution in public schools, and is convicted and fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court upholds the Act but overturns the conviction.27

  7. Modern
    1966

    The journal Zygon is founded, the field's first specialist journal.28

  8. Modern
    1968

    The US Supreme Court strikes down Arkansas's anti-evolution law under the Establishment Clause.29

  9. Modern
    1987

    The US Supreme Court strikes down, by seven to two, Louisiana's law requiring "balanced treatment" of creation science and evolution, for lack of a clear secular purpose.30

  10. Modern
    1991

    John Hedley Brooke's Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives appears at Cambridge; he is "widely recognised" for the "complexity thesis" that replaced the conflict model.31

  11. Modern
    2004

    The International Theological Commission's Communion and Stewardship accepts the Big Bang as "the widely accepted scientific account" and holds common descent "virtually certain".9

  12. Modern
    4 October 2007

    The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, in Resolution 1580, says that "Creationism cannot, however, lay claim to being a scientific discipline" and urges member states to oppose teaching it as science, while allowing it in religious and cultural education.32

  13. Modern
    2008

    Evolution, "excluded from the South African school curriculum for most of the 20th century", is taught in Grade 12 for the first time.33

  14. Modern
    2014 and 2015

    Pope Francis tells the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that God "is not a demiurge or a magician" and that the Big Bang "does not contradict the intervention of a divine creator but depends on it". His encyclical Laudato Si' (2015) says science and religion "can enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both".1034

  15. Modern
    2020

    The Ecumenical Patriarchate's For the Life of the World calls the Church to "overcome any apparent antagonism between the world of faith and that of the sciences".11

  16. Modern
    2023 to 2026

    Hu and colleagues infer a severe bottleneck of "about 1280 breeding individuals" in human ancestry between about 930,000 and 813,000 years ago. Deng, Nielsen and Song (2025) conclude that it is "likely a statistical artifact", Cousins and Durvasula (2025) find no reason to favor a bottleneck model, and Hu and colleagues reply in 2026 defending it.35363738

How to study theology and science

The questions it asks

  • What do scientists say today about the age of the universe and the Earth, evolution and human origins, and on what evidence?
  • Is the old story of warfare between science and religion true?28
  • What do young-earth creationists, old-earth creationists, intelligent design and evolutionary creationists hold, and who holds each?
  • Were Adam and Eve historical individuals, and do all humans descend from them alone?
  • Does God act only by creating and sustaining the world, or also in particular events, and do non-interventionist models need a world that is at some level non-deterministic?28
  • What have the churches taught, and how are these questions lived in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Its method

Start

  1. State the scientific consensus accurately, with the scientific body or paper that gives it and its date.

  2. State its confidence: settled, consensus with debate on details, or open; common descent is treated as settled, while the pace and mechanisms of evolution are debated399.

  3. Keep apart effective and census population, genetic and genealogical ancestry, a sole ancestral couple, and a historical representative pair35.

  4. Give each Christian reading with who holds it, a church, an organization or a named scholar, and never write "Christians believe" where they divide.

  5. Report scientific dissent as dissent, with its holder, and do not present a dissent as a consensus or a consensus as a dissent404142.

  6. Label each source by kind: peer-reviewed finding, scientific review, church teaching, individual theologian, or advocacy claim.

  7. Keep apart the empirical claims about dates and processes on which evidence can bear strongly, and God's existence and the meaning of the text, which science as a method does not adjudicate.

  8. Treat an open scientific question, such as the origin of life or fine-tuning, as no positive evidence for any theological reading, nor its eventual answer as evidence against one43.

  9. Use Ian Barbour's four models of conflict, independence, dialogue and integration as a map, not as a verdict on any tradition; its categories are not mutually exclusive28.

What to read

Its primary witnesses

  • The scientific bodies' statements on the universe: NASA's overview, the European Space Agency's report of Planck's first results (2013) and the Planck Collaboration's final 2018 analysis444546.
  • The US Geological Survey's dating of the Earth from lead isotopes in meteorites and ores, and the Jack Hills zircon dated to 4.4 billion years by atom-probe tomography4748.
  • The lines of evidence for common descent: fossils and transitional features, biogeography, homologies, development, nested hierarchies, evolution observed in nature, experiments and artificial selection39.
  • The fossil record of human origins, among them the Jebel Irhoud fossils from Morocco, dated to 315 ± 34 thousand years4950.
  • Population genetics studies of past human population sizes, with the 2023 bottleneck estimate and the replies to it35363738.
  • Historical texts: the Paris condemnation of 1277, the record of the Galileo affair in 1616 and 1633, Newton's General Scholium and Charles Kingsley's letter to Darwin on On the Origin of Species23242526.
  • Church teaching documents: Communion and Stewardship (2004), the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Laudato Si' (2015) and the Ecumenical Patriarchate's For the Life of the World (2020)983411.
  • Confessional and synodal statements: the Westminster Confession, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod's Brief Statement (1932), the Adventist Fundamental Belief 6 and the Assemblies of God position paper The Doctrine of Creation14162018.
  • The organizations' own statements of position: Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, Reasons to Believe, the Discovery Institute and BioLogos12345.
  • Court records and resolutions on teaching: Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) and the Council of Europe's Resolution 1580 (2007)293032.
  • Surveys: Gallup on US adults (2024), Pew on Latin America (2014) and Stears and colleagues on South African teachers (2016)515253.

Standard reference works

  • Helen De Cruz's entry "Religion and Science" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy28.
  • The journal Zygon, founded in 1966, the field's first specialist journal28.
  • John Hedley Brooke's Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991), winner of the History of Science Society's Watson Davis Prize31.
  • Peter Harrison's Gifford Lectures, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago, 2015)54.
  • The five volumes of the Vatican Observatory and CTNS research program, under the subtitle Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, with a retrospective in 20085556.
  • Four Views on the Historical Adam (Zondervan, 2013), with Denis Lamoureux, John Walton, C. John Collins and William Barrick57.
  • John Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One7.
  • Nancey Murphy's Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge, 2006)58.
  • The University of California's teaching resource on the evidence for common descent39.

Scholarship referenced in this study

The works below shaped the field and are cited in this study, from the earliest to the most recent. Hover over a book, or select it, to see its author and the sources behind it.

  • 1713General ScholiumNewtonGeneral Scholium (1713)NewtonSources25
  • 1859On the Origin of SpeciesDarwinOn the Origin of Species (1859)DarwinSources26
  • 1991Science and Religion: Some Historical PerspectivesJohn Hedley BrookeScience and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991)John Hedley BrookeSources31
  • 2004Communion and StewardshipInternational Theological CommissionCommunion and Stewardship (2004)International Theological CommissionSources9
  • 2006Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?Nancey MurphyBodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (2006)Nancey MurphySources58
  • 2013Four Views on the Historical AdamBarrettFour Views on the Historical Adam (2013)Barrett, with CanedaySources57
  • 2015Laudato Si'Pope FrancisLaudato Si' (2015)Pope FrancisSources34
  • 2015The Territories of Science and ReligionPeter HarrisonThe Territories of Science and Religion (2015)Peter HarrisonSources54
  • 2020For the Life of the WorldEcumenical PatriarchateFor the Life of the World (2020)Ecumenical PatriarchateSources11

Listed because this study draws on their published work; no association with or endorsement of Numa Verse is implied. Suggest a correction.

Key terms

The words that carry the most weight in this field, each defined from the sources of this study. Turn a card over to read its definition.

The scientific model of an expanding universe from a hot, dense early state about 13.8 billion years ago; the cosmic microwave background "is the oldest light we can observe"44.

The claim that all living things share ancestry, which biology treats as settled on converging lines of evidence, as distinct from debates about the mechanisms of evolution399.

The view that creation took place in six 24-hour days a few thousand years ago1.

The view that the universe is old but that kinds, or humans, were created directly3.

The claim that some features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause4.

The view that God creates through evolutionary processes, also called theistic evolution, though BioLogos distinguishes it from a deistic form5.

Adam and Eve as genealogical ancestors of everyone alive, alongside a wider population, not as the sole genetic sources of humanity59.

A model-based genetic estimate of the breeding population that would produce the observed variation, not a head count35.

God creating and sustaining all things, and God acting in particular events such as miracles and revelation28.

The view, defended by Nancey Murphy, that humans are physical beings whose higher capacities emerge from neurobiological complexity and are not reducible to physics58.

Where it sits

Builds on

Theology and science

Questions people ask

NASA states that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old44. The Planck Collaboration's 2018 analysis gives a Hubble constant of 67.4 ± 0.5 km/s/Mpc, while most local measurements cluster near 73; this Hubble tension concerns the expansion rate, not whether the universe is billions of years old4640. The US Geological Survey gives the age of the Earth as about 4.54 billion years, with an uncertainty of less than 1 percent47. Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research hold a recent creation12.

The churches differ by tradition. Catholic teaching accepts the evolution of the body with each soul created by God98, and the United Methodist Book of Discipline states that "science's descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology"17. The Assemblies of God (United States) rule out common ancestry18, the Seventh-day Adventist Church confesses creation in "six literal days"20, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints takes no position on the scientific theory of evolution22.

Christian scientists disagree. Dennis Venema argues that the human population never fell much below about 10,00060, while Richard Buggs replies that the studies cited do not test a single-couple bottleneck directly41. A long exchange in 2017 and 2018 concluded that genetics cannot exclude a brief two-person bottleneck before about 500,000 years ago, which is not evidence that one occurred6162. S. Joshua Swamidass proposes a genealogical Adam, a pair who are genealogical ancestors of everyone alive alongside a wider population59.

Helen De Cruz reports that "the vast majority of authors" in the field are critical of the conflict model, which is "at present a minority position"28. John Hedley Brooke's "complexity thesis" replaced it31, and Peter Harrison argues that "science" and "religion" are themselves modern categories54. Alvin Plantinga argues that the real conflict is between science and naturalism, not science and theism28.

Its holders and critics disagree. The Discovery Institute presents it as the view that some features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause4. The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly called it "the latest, more refined version of creationism" in 200732, and BioLogos also rejects it as science6. The International Theological Commission said that the question of design versus chance is scientific and "cannot be settled by theology"9.

Contribute to theology and science

Register to contribute

  1. 1Statement of Faith (Answers in Genesis)https://answersingenesis.org/about/faith/ (opens in a new tab)
  2. 2Core Principles (Institute for Creation Research)https://www.icr.org/tenets (opens in a new tab)
  3. 3About (Reasons to Believe)https://reasons.org/about (opens in a new tab)
  4. 4Intelligent Design: Frequently Asked Questions (Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture)https://www.discovery.org/id/faqs/ (opens in a new tab)
  5. 5What is Evolutionary Creation? (BioLogos)https://biologos.org/common-questions/what-is-evolutionary-creation (opens in a new tab)
  6. 6About Us (BioLogos)https://biologos.org/about-us (opens in a new tab)
  7. 7The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP Academic)https://www.ivpress.com/the-lost-world-of-genesis-one (opens in a new tab)
  8. 8Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 362 to 368 (vatican.va)https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1B.HTM (opens in a new tab)
  9. 9Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God (International Theological Commission, vatican.va)https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html (opens in a new tab)
  10. 10Address to the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 27 October 2014 (vatican.va)https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/october/documents/papa-francesco_20141027_plenaria-accademia-scienze.html (opens in a new tab)
  11. 11For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (Ecumenical Patriarchate, goarch.org)https://www.goarch.org/social-ethos (opens in a new tab)
  12. 12Religious Groups' Views on Evolution (Pew Research Center)https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/02/04/religious-groups-views-on-evolution/ (opens in a new tab)
  13. 13Apologies to Darwin? (National Center for Science Education)https://ncse.ngo/apologies-darwin (opens in a new tab)
  14. 14Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of the Creation Study Committee Report (byFaith, PCA)https://byfaithonline.com/reflections-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-creation-study-committee-report/ (opens in a new tab)
  15. 15Creation and Science (Christian Reformed Church in North America)https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/position-statements/creation-and-science (opens in a new tab)
  16. 16A Brief Statement, Of Creation (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Project Wittenberg)https://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/mosynod/web/doct-03.html (opens in a new tab)
  17. 17Can Christians embrace faith and science? (United Methodist News)https://www.umnews.org/news/can-christians-embrace-faith-and-science (opens in a new tab)
  18. 18The Doctrine of Creation (Assemblies of God)https://ag.org/Beliefs/Position-Papers/The-Doctrine-of-Creation (opens in a new tab)
  19. 19Response to an Affirmation of Creation (General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, adventist.org)https://www.adventist.org/?p=1331 (opens in a new tab)
  20. 20Report on the 2015 revision of Fundamental Belief 6 (Adventist Review)https://adventistreview.org/?p=4356 (opens in a new tab)
  21. 21Science and the Genesis Account (jw.org)https://www.jw.org/en/library/brochures/was-life-created/science-and-the-genesis-account/ (opens in a new tab)
  22. 22Religion and Science, Gospel Topics (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/religion-and-science?lang=eng (opens in a new tab)
  23. 23Condemnation of 1277 (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/condemnation/ (opens in a new tab)
  24. 24Galileo Galilei (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/ (opens in a new tab)
  25. 25General Scholium, 1729 English translation (The Newton Project, University of Oxford)https://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00056 (opens in a new tab)
  26. 26Kingsley to Darwin, 18 November 1859 (Darwin Correspondence Project)https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2534.xml (opens in a new tab)
  27. 27Scopes v. State (First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University)https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/?p=6206 (opens in a new tab)
  28. 28Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/ (opens in a new tab)
  29. 29Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968) (Justia)https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/393/97/ (opens in a new tab)
  30. 30Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) (Justia)https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/482/578/ (opens in a new tab)
  31. 31John Hedley Brooke (Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford)https://www.ianramseycentre.ox.ac.uk/people/john-hedley-brooke (opens in a new tab)
  32. 32Resolution 1580 (2007), The dangers of creationism in education (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe)https://pace.coe.int/files/17592/html (opens in a new tab)
  33. 33Student teachers' attitudes towards and willingness to teach evolution in a changing South African environment (University of Pretoria repository)https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/15817?show=full (opens in a new tab)
  34. 34Laudato Si' (vatican.va)https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (opens in a new tab)
  35. 35Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition (Science, PubMed)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37651513/ (opens in a new tab)
  36. 36A previously reported bottleneck in human ancestry 900 kya is likely a statistical artifact (Genetics)https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/229/1/iyae192/7925576 (opens in a new tab)
  37. 37Cousins and Durvasula, re-examination of Hu et al. (2023) (Molecular Biology and Evolution)https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/2/msaf041/8005733 (opens in a new tab)
  38. 38Comparison of FitCoal and mushi in reply to the critiques (Molecular Biology and Evolution)https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/43/7/msag157/8723835 (opens in a new tab)
  39. 39Lines of evidence (Understanding Evolution, University of California Museum of Paleontology)https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/ (opens in a new tab)
  40. 40Cosmic conflict continues: new data fuel the Hubble tension debate (Physics World)https://physicsworld.com/?p=122262 (opens in a new tab)
  41. 41Adam and Eve: a tested hypothesis? (Springer Nature Research Communities)https://communities.springernature.com/posts/journal-club-adam-and-eve-a-tested-hypothesis (opens in a new tab)
  42. 42A Single-Couple Human Origin is Possible (BIO-Complexity)https://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2019.1 (opens in a new tab)
  43. 43The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system (Nature Ecology and Evolution)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02461-1 (opens in a new tab)
  44. 44Universe: Overview (NASA Science)https://science.nasa.gov/universe/overview/ (opens in a new tab)
  45. 45Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe (European Space Agency)https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_reveals_an_almost_perfect_Universe (opens in a new tab)
  46. 46Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters (Astronomy and Astrophysics)https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2020/09/aa33910-18/aa33910-18.html (opens in a new tab)
  47. 47Geologic Time: Age of the Earth (United States Geological Survey)https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html (opens in a new tab)
  48. 48Oldest bit of crust firms up idea of cool early Earth (ScienceDaily)https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140223131616.htm (opens in a new tab)
  49. 49Homo sapiens (Human Origins, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens (opens in a new tab)
  50. 50New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens (Nature, PubMed)https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28593953/ (opens in a new tab)
  51. 51Majority Still Credit God for Humankind, but Not Creationism (Gallup)https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credit-god-humankind-not-creationism.aspx (opens in a new tab)
  52. 52Chapter 8: Religion and Science, Religion in Latin America (Pew Research Center)https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/11/13/chapter-8-religion-and-science/ (opens in a new tab)
  53. 53Creationist and evolutionist views of South African teachers with different religious affiliations (South African Journal of Science)https://sajs.co.za/article/view/4083 (opens in a new tab)
  54. 54Review of The Territories of Science and Religion (The Revealer)https://therevealer.org/review-territories-of-science-and-religion-by-peter-harrison/ (opens in a new tab)
  55. 55Vatican Observatory and CTNS Collaboration (Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences)https://www.ctns.org/node/6786 (opens in a new tab)
  56. 56Divine Action (Zygon)https://zygonjournal.org/article/13811/galley/27999/download (opens in a new tab)
  57. 57Four Views on the Historical Adam (Zondervan Academic)https://www.zondervanacademic.com/products/four-views-on-the-historical-adam (opens in a new tab)
  58. 58Review of Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (ISCAST Journal)https://journal.iscast.org/archive/book-review-bodies-and-souls-or-spirited-bodies (opens in a new tab)
  59. 59The Genealogical Adam and Eve (IVP Academic)https://www.ivpress.com/the-genealogical-adam-and-eve (opens in a new tab)
  60. 60Review of Adam and the Genome (ISCAST Journal)https://journal.iscast.org/archive/review-of-adam-and-the-genome-reading-scripture-after-genetic-science (opens in a new tab)
  61. 61Adam and Eve: lessons learned (Nature Portfolio Ecology and Evolution Community)https://communities.springernature.com/posts/adam-and-eve-lessons-learned (opens in a new tab)
  62. 62The Misunderstood Science of Genetic Bottlenecks (Peaceful Science)https://peacefulscience.org/prints/misunderstood-bottleneck/ (opens in a new tab)

Page record

Reviewed and approved by Duane Herholdt, BA (Theology), Chief Executive Officer, Numa Verse

Study version: v1.1, 7 November 2026 (theology map v1.27)

Last reviewed: 9 November 2026

How these pages are made

  • 9 November 2026: First draft from the approved assessment v1.1.