Scientist lectures on faith, evolution
Heather Dumas
Issue date: 4/27/09 Section: News
Dr. Keith Miller, a paleontologist from Kansas State University, lectured on "Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: Then and Now" April 17 in the main theatre of the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts as part of the Jane M.G. Foster Distinguished Lecture Series.
"The year 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of 'Origin of the Species,' and it's being commemorated internationally," said Dr. Kurt Shoemaker, professor of geology at SSU.
Miller met with a small group for dinner before his lecture and shared some of his views on the topic of science and faith. He put particular emphasis on how these ideas relate to Darwin's theories on evolution.
"One of the points that I hope to make this evening is that a lot of Darwin's contemporaries and Darwin's earliest supporters were themselves people of faith, people of evangelical theology," Miller said.
According to Miller, many of the prominent people both in geology and biology during Darwin's time were people of faith. But Darwin's theories were adopted for use by people with political, economic and social agendas, and that this led people to reject Darwin's theories, especially in the early 20th century.
"I think it's more of a return, a recapturing of the kind of views held back in the late 1800s by many of those in the Christian community," Miller said of the cultural attempt to reconcile science and theology. "Of separating out, disentangling, the social abuses of the theory from the theory itself, and recognizing that the science itself does not pose any necessary conflict."
Miller said that there is still a continuous history of compatibility of interaction of dialogue between science and faith.
"I think there is danger of trying to make science do too much, trying to make science the arbiter of all truth," Miller said. "Science isn't about truth in the big sense. It's about understanding how the world works and how natural processes work. It's understanding nature in terms of nature."
"The year 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of 'Origin of the Species,' and it's being commemorated internationally," said Dr. Kurt Shoemaker, professor of geology at SSU.
Miller met with a small group for dinner before his lecture and shared some of his views on the topic of science and faith. He put particular emphasis on how these ideas relate to Darwin's theories on evolution.
"One of the points that I hope to make this evening is that a lot of Darwin's contemporaries and Darwin's earliest supporters were themselves people of faith, people of evangelical theology," Miller said.
According to Miller, many of the prominent people both in geology and biology during Darwin's time were people of faith. But Darwin's theories were adopted for use by people with political, economic and social agendas, and that this led people to reject Darwin's theories, especially in the early 20th century.
"I think it's more of a return, a recapturing of the kind of views held back in the late 1800s by many of those in the Christian community," Miller said of the cultural attempt to reconcile science and theology. "Of separating out, disentangling, the social abuses of the theory from the theory itself, and recognizing that the science itself does not pose any necessary conflict."
Miller said that there is still a continuous history of compatibility of interaction of dialogue between science and faith.
"I think there is danger of trying to make science do too much, trying to make science the arbiter of all truth," Miller said. "Science isn't about truth in the big sense. It's about understanding how the world works and how natural processes work. It's understanding nature in terms of nature."
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bobxxxx
posted 4/27/09 @ 7:31 PM EST
"Miller said that there is still a continuous history of compatibility of interaction of dialogue between science and faith."
Baloney. Faith contributes nothing to human progress. (Continued…)
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