Science & Religion Today highlights a recent article in Science that sketches some of the some of the potential dimensions that creationism might take in a Muslim context. Worth a look at if you’re interested in how religious perspectives on things like evolution might happen in a non-Christian religious context.

With the 200th and 150th anniversaries in 2009 of the birth of Darwin and the publication of Origin of the Species respectively there are all sorts of things happening around the place to mark that.

Here’s a couple coming up in Auckland in the first few months of next year.

Charles Darwin celebrations – The University of Auckland

If you have an interest in science and religion or history you will probably be interested to know that Cambridge University has digitized and published on the internet its collection Darwin material (30,000 odd items and 90,000 images, as well as audio material). From the web site:

This site contains Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Almost all is online only here: such as 1st editions of Voyage of the Beagle, Zoology, Descent of Man, all editions of Origin of Species (1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th & 6th); important manuscripts: Beagle Diary & field notebooks, Journal, transmutation notebooks and Autobiography.

You can access the site at: The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (darwin-online.org.uk).

More too, over at Complete Darwin Papers Debut on Internet | Wired Science from Wired.com

A few recent Charles Darwin links.

David Wollert, whom you may remember from Greenflame · Emergent systems & the church and Greenflame · Emergent systems & the church (revisited), has produced a documentary about Charles Darwin’s religious life. You can find it at:

• Blank Slate Studios – PARADISE LOST: The Religious Life of Charles Darwin

Looks like an interesting approach to Darwin’s life and thought – one ignored by some religious and secular accounts that both, for various reasons, hold Darwin up as the arch-enemy of religion.

Also, the Auckland museum is currently running an exhibit on Charles Darwin which I want to get to soon, I hope.

• Darwin | Exhibition at Auckland Museum 29 September 2007 – 13 January 2008 – Auckland Museum New Zealand

And finally, James McGrath has been doing a series of posts on Philip Kitcher’s book Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith.

• Exploring Our Matrix: Living With Darwin

The stuff of Darwin Awards. See Good book drives doctor to distraction.

Speaking of Faith (from American Public Media) has a very interesting podcast (and additional web content) on Charles Darwin and his relationship to religion. I listened to half of it this morning and it was intriguing. The relationship is far more complicated and nuanced that the oft-proclaimed Darwin vs. God conflict. See SOF: Evolution and Wonder – Understanding Charles Darwin [Speaking of Faith® from American Public Media]

From the Scopes Trial to school board controversies in our day, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution are portrayed as a refutal of the very idea of God. With Darwin biographer James Moore, we’ll learn about the world in which Darwin formulated his ideas and how he took religion seriously.

Yesterday I did my two (mini-)lectures for the bioethics block course at Carey.

The first lecture “Theology and Science : where are we today?” looked at the current state of science and religion/theology interaction. Alerted by Jason I tracked down Time Magazine for 15 August with its cover story “Evolution Wars” (& related story “Face-Off: Darwinians vs. Anti-Darwinians”). Jason has some good questions and observations on his posting along with quite a few comments.

Anyway, the reason I tracked the article down was to use it to emphasize to the class how science-religion interaction is typically portrayed, and to point out that it’s often narrowly defined as an evolution vs. special creation debate. To do so misses out on the dialogue going on in areas such as cosmology, genetics, neuroscience, ethics and the environment. Plus historically its hard to make a case that science and religion have always been, and will always continue to be, mortal enemies. Reality is, as usual, far more complicated than that. For example, have a listen to John Stenhouse’s lecture on science and religion “Galileo’s Dilemma: Science and Religion” given as part of the NZ Royal Society’s EINSTEIN 2005 LECTURE SERIES. (Windows Media audio link here)

Jason’s pondering about whether geography has an effect upon the nature of science-religion discussion is interesting too and similar thoughts were expressed in this editorial – Denis Alexander, “Geography and the Science-Faith Debate”, Science and Christian Belief, Vol. 15, No. 1, April 2003. (PDF Link)

The other lecture, “Transhumanism : Humans as (co-)creators”, filled in the slot from 4:30-5:00pm to end the day. A quick, basic survey looking at various strands of post- or transhuman thought, leading into some questions about how to engage with the ideas behind aspects of technology and technoculture. Both this and previous lecture seemed to go okay – though as with all block courses the information stream has to be compressed somewhat given the limited timeframe and there’s way less room for discussion.

Good to see a full lecture theatre for the course and students prepared to engage with the material – though I imagine it was stretching for many of them.

Maggi Dawn posted a comment on my blog entry about “Darwin and Fundamentalism” with a reference to book on Victorian times and how that related to Darwin. I’ve gathered some links to web sites with Darwin and Victoriana information so I thought I’d add them here for those who are interested.

• The Victorian Web: An Overview
• The C. Warren Irvin, Jr., Collection of Charles Darwin and Darwiniana
• Extract from Charles Darwin’s autobiography
• Online Literature Library – Charles Darwin (texts of his books)