Links to

Celebration of Evolution

What and why "evolution"

Scientific story of evolution

Religious perspectives on the scientific story

A particular religious perspective

Schedule

Directions to Wege Auditorium and parking

The scientific creation story imagines that time and space themselves began some 13.7 billion years ago with a very, very small soup of very, very hot somethings we cannot even imagine. Space itself expanded, and as it ex[anded the soup of somethings cooled, much as gases cool while expending. When it was cool enough, particles formed like those we can make in our big accelerators under conditons we imagine to be like the very early universe. Upon further cooling, more familiar structures formed: atoms forming stars, and stars cooking up more atoms and exploding them out into the spaces in between stars to form new stars and planetary systems. At least one planet has had a size and composition and place near its star such that large molecules could form. Then somehow, complex adaptive self-organizing life emerged.

The story is told nicely in the book A Walk Through Time, by Liebes, Sartoris and Swimme. The pictures wih some narrative are also available on-line at http://www.globalcommunity.org/wtt/walk_menu/index.html. If you happen to be near Williams College, you can view pictures and narrative in the halls of our Unified Science Center.

Here are just a few characteristics of the creation worth exploring from a religious perspective:

Intricately beautiful: for example, the finely tuned balance of the physical laws; the precision of the structure and replication of the simplest cells

Mathematically intelligible: exhibiting regularities we are able to formulate mathematically

Vastly various: the universe is apparently larger, older, and filled with more variety than imagined previously

Made of stardust: all living creatures are made in much the same way from common elements cooked up in stars and supernova explosions

Responsive: from the simplest atoms to the most complex organisms, all created things react when acted upon

Unpredicatble: details of the future are far too complicated for minds like ours

Relational: there are no isolated entities; relationships are the keys to understanding our universe

Interdependent: individual survival depends on the health of the whole

Ultimately futile: as sure as it is alive, our universe and all the material within it will perish

Click here to explore religious perspectives on these attributes