Award-winning professor speaks on science and God
The winner of the world’s largest monetary annual award given to an individual spoke on campus Friday about his beliefs on “Genes, Genesis and God.”
Recently named 2003 Templeton Prize winner, Holmes Rolston III told students, faculty and community members he believes a divine presence is as plausible as ever.
“Life gets more promising over evolutionary history,” Rolston said. “God optimizes it.”
USU professor of philosophy Richard Sherlock, who said Rolston is a personal friend, helped bring the Templeton recipient to USU from Colorado State University, where he is the university distinguished professor of philosophy.
Sherlock called Rolston one of “America’s truly distinguished thinkers,” who has approached many times a “genuine dialogue between science and religion.”
Rolston is also a founder of Environmental Ethics, Sherlock said, and has written and edited many articles for the national journal Ethics.
The Templeton Prize, Sherlock said, was founded in 1972 by Sir John Templeton, and is valued at 725,000 pounds sterling (more than $1 million).
It is also the most honorable award worldwide in the humanities area, he said.
Rolston said diversity and complexity has increased over time and has, in turn, helped and/or forced species to adapt different skills for survival. He said although evolution has definitely occurred throughout Earth’s history, he believes in a God who is “the pro-life principle overseeing the affairs of matter.
“We do have, one way or another, diversity and complexity that has happened over evolutionary history,” Rolston said, while showing graphs of plants and animal species increasing in number over the past millions of years.
Rolston also quoted many prominent biologists and philosophers, such as J.W. Valentine, Melvin Calvin and Christian de Duve, saying there has been an “undeniable increase in diversity and complexity” in history.
Rolston said there is dispute over whether an increase in diversity is attributed to something that’s “written in the cards,” or a “luck of the draw.”
In biology, he said, he doesn’t “see anything that says God can’t be slipping information to the world,” which also, he said, might be called inspiration. He suggested that God might be “front-loading all these possibilities to the world.”
Sherlock said Rolston delivered the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University in 1997, which is one of the most important lectureships. Part of his lecture series was published into one of his books, “Genes, Genesis and God,” which is what his lecture at USU was based upon.
Other books by Rolston include “Philosophy Gone Wild,” “Environmental Ethics,” and “Religion and Science: A Critical Survey.”
Rolston will be awarded the Templeton Prize at Buckingham Palace in May by the Duke of Edinburgh, Sherlock said.
Rolston is a Presbyterian minister and, according to a news release, is one of the world’s leading advocates for protecting Earth’s biodiversity and ecology.
-emilieholmes@cc.usu.edu