Anti-Evolutionary Creationism in Contemporary Poland and its Influence on Religious Education

Abstract

In this text, I analyze the theses put forward by Polish anti-evolutionary creationists, which in recent years have been expressed not only in scientific publications, but also in various forms of transmitting the content of religious faith and in public debates, which are an important aspect of the discussed field. The aim of the article is to define the main components of anti-evolutionary creationism and to capture the ways of thinking that lead to internal inconsistency of formulated concepts as well as their incoherence with philosophical, theological, and scientific knowledge.

I show how many aspects of anti-evolutionary creationism have been included in catechetical books published in the last decade in Poland. There are too many fundamental errors in their content that is often edited in a manner that does not serve to build a positive relationship between science and religious faith. Evolutionism is mainly associated with extreme naturalism, and creationism with a fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical accounts of creation and the rejection of the theory of evolution. Too little attention is paid to the scientific forms of evolutionism and the worthwhile currents of creationism. It results, among other things, from the lack of consultation of the problems that lie on the frontier between natural sciences and theology with those representatives of the Catholic Church who deal with interdisciplinary issues in daily academic practice.