The 2008-2009 J. K. Russell Fellowship in Religion and Science with Dr. Francisco Ayala: Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion -- Celebrating the Darwin Year 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
J. K. Russell Research Conference, Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, with Francisco J. Ayala
With militant atheists claiming that evolutionary biology disproves God and with creation scientists and theorists of Intelligent Design challenging the omission of God in neo-Darwinian biology, is there a robust alternative that takes evolution seriously and places it within a credible and persuasive Christian view of the world? “Yes”, say theistic evolutionists representing a wide spectrum of Christian views: compare B. B. Warfield and Teilhard de Chardin, or Kenneth Miller and Jurgen Moltmann, or Francis Collins and Archbishop Joseph Zycinski, or Celia Deane-Drummond and John Haught. All of them agree that “evolution is how God creates the diversity of biological species in nature.” But evolutionary biology, in turn, raises new questions for theological reflection: Do humans share anything about the imago dei with non-human or pre-human life? Is human moral capacity a product of evolution that nevertheless leaves the choice of specific moral codes up to religion? What is God’s relation to “natural evil”: the suffering, disease, death, and extinction that permeate the history of life on earth? Questions like these and many others provide the basis for this year’s CTNS J. K. Russell Research Conference in Berkeley, California, on April 4, featuring the distinguished evolutionary biologist and geneticist Francisco J. Ayala, Ph.D.
The Research Conference held at the Graduate Theological Union Board Room, Berkeley, California