If Humans are Inevitable, What Are the Theological Implications?

Speaker(s): Simon Conway Morris
Date: January 22, 2009
Length: 1:14:04
Product ID: RGDL3902B

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Description

That evolution is a fact is as secure a truth as the existence of the Periodic Table or the mass of an electron. Yet we are in the curious position of not only understanding all three, but finding ourselves in a Universe that not only is curiously fit for purpose but one which at many levels ignites our capacity for imagination. Thus humans are products of evolution, but transcend it. In this lecture, Professor Conway Morris will explore the implications that not only is evolution forced to navigate what is effectively a pre-existing landscape of possibilities (a view guaranteed to rattle most pious neo-Darwinians who are still wedded to randomness), but can be seen as being analogous to a search engine, an engine that just happens to stumble not only on science but other truths.

See All Audio by Simon Conway Morris

Simon Conway Morris PhD (Cambridge, 1976) Fellow of the Royal Society, has been Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge since 1983. In 1995 he was elected to an ad hominem Chair in Evolutionary Palaeobiology and is renowned for his insights into early evolution. He made his reputation with his work on the Cambrian "explosion." This work contained a very detailed and careful study of the Burgess Shale fossils in China and Greenland. Conway Morris is a former student of Harry Blackmore Whittington. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society 1990 at 39, was awarded the Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987, and the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1998. In recent years, he has been investigating the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence, which is explained in his book, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.

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