Evolutionism and religion. (Proceedings of the meeting in Florence, 19-21 november 2009)

The theory of evolution has been often used in the last decades as a weapon in the atheistic fight against religion. This is in way strange, since peaceful relations between evolutionism and religion had been quickly attained already in the nineteenth century, after a few initial but isolated polemics. Moreover, not only the “compatibility” of evolutionism and religion has been defended by many scholars on the ground of different arguments, but even theological perspectives explicitly “incorporating” evolution in a Christian worldview have been elaborated by such prominent figures as Drummond, Theilard de Chardin and Maritain. Yet a legal controversy lasted more than half a century in the courts of the USA has determined the revival of a dispute that has gradually acquired the overtones of an ideological confrontation. Therefore, an unbiased analysis of this issue appears of significant cultural importance, and two sister Academies (the International Academy of Philosophy of Science an