Links to

Celebration of Evolution

What and why "evolution"

Scientific story of evolution

Religious perspectives on the scientific story

Schedule

Directions to Wege Auditorium and parking

Many evidently take the term "evolution" to stand for the scientific metanarrative by which life evolves without external agency through random genetic mutation and natural selection, while "creationism" is attached to alternative versions that insist on external guidance or design.

We prefer to use the term "evolution" simply to describe what seems to have happened and to be happening: an ongoing creation producing, when conditions are right, ever more complex adaptive self-organizing systems, sometimes inanimate, sometimes alive, sometimes conscious.

The stories told by various cultures about the origin of our world and its natural processes help them to articulate what it is to be human and how to live.

Religious creation stories and prophecies help to ground and guide religious communities:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)

"Do you indeed disbelieve in Him who in two days created the earth? (Qur'an, Sura 41:8)

"When in the height heaven was not named, …" (Enuma Elish Tablet I, line 1)

"The spirit of emptiness is … called the Great Mother because it gives birth to Heaven and Earth." (Tao Te Ching, Ch. 6)

"Here and now I will do a new thing; this moment it will break from the bud." (Isaiah 43:19)

"Behold! I am making all things new!" (Revelation 21:5)

The scientific creation story also suggests something of what it is to be human and how to live as a global community. That is why we are interested.