Apologies

In the 17th century the Catholic Church didn’t much like Galileo Galilei. It took until 1992 for the Catholic Church to acknowledge that the Earth was not stationary and express regret for how the Galileo affair was handled.

Charles Darwin died in 1882. Creationists still hate him today. Thanks to The Rev. Malcolm Brown perhaps there is some hope that more will see the light of truth and science.

From Cleric: Church owes Darwin an apology:

The Church of England owes Charles Darwin an apology for its hostile 19th-century reaction to the naturalist's theory of evolution, a cleric wrote on an Anglican Web site launched Monday.

The Rev. Malcolm Brown, who heads the church's public affairs department, issued the statement to mark Darwin's bicentenary and the 150th anniversary of the seminal work "On the Origin of Species," both of which fall next year.

Brown said the Church of England should say it is sorry for misunderstanding him at the time he released his findings and, "by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand (Darwin) still."

The Church of England said Brown's statement reflected its position on Darwin but did not constitute an official apology.

The church's stance sets it apart from fundamentalist Christians, who believe evolutionary theory is incompatible with the biblical story of the Earth's creation.

Read the rest here.

It is 2008. Nearly all religious people seem to hate Richard Dawkins. Perhaps one day in the future, apologies will appear in the news from all the major religious leaders saying that Dawkins was right all along, and maybe they had gotten that God thing wrong.