Friday, April 20, 2001, 7:30 - 8:30 PM

"God, Darwin, and Kansas - The New Battle over Evolution."

Professor Kenneth R. Miller
Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, & Biochemistry
Brown University

The common assumption, widely shared in academic and intellectual circles, is that Darwinism is antagonistic to traditional religious belief.  One may, of course, accept the scientific validity of evolution and profess belief in a supreme being, but not without diluting traditional religion almost beyond recognition, or so the thinking goes.  Incredibly, all too many traditional believers accept this view, not realizing that it is based more on a humanistic culture of disbelief than on any finding of evolutionary science.  In a curious way, this allows each side to validate the extremes of the other.  Religion leads one side to reject the cornerstone of the life sciences, while the other delights in telling us that science can determine the meaning of life-which is, of course, that it does not have one.

Kenneth Miller is the author of "Finding Darwin's God: a scientist's search for common ground between God and evolution".   Miller played an active role last year in defending the theory of evolution during a series of statewide political battles in Kansas.  He will describe these experiences, while at the same time arguing that faith and reason share a common interest in seeing evolution properly presented in  science classrooms.

Kenneth Miller, a recipient of numerous awards for outstanding teaching, is a cell biologist, Professor of biology at Brown University, and the coauthor of widely used high school and college biology textbooks.  In addition, he has written articles that have appeared in numerous scientific journals and magazines, including Nature, Scientific American , Cell, and Discover.