SUMMARY OF GENERAL LECTURE: Evolution and Religions

Evolution and Religions : Humans and the Emergence of Meaning

Monday, 6^th March 2017

Auditorium, Faculty of Biology UGM

Lecturer:     Whitney A, Bauman, Ph.D.

                   Associate Professor of Religious Study

                   Florida International University

Note: Because of the interesting topic, there are huge number of participants and it makes the room crowded. It makes me couldn’t understand the matter clearly, but in this resume, I will try to write some points I’ve been noted based on what I could understand. J

The general lecture was held by Faculty of Biology UGM. This event was participated by the students and lecturers of UGM. In this opportunity, Mr. Whitney delivered a lecture based on his research in religious study related to science. Some points that was delivered by the lecturer are:

1.  Evolution changes everything in the world, especially human. It change the meaning of everything, language, and human creativity. Human try to interpret many things by the emergence of evolution theory. One of them is how we interpret the lineages among creatures in the earth.

2.    Is human really involved in evolution?

3.    Religion and science have the opposite function but clearly related to each other. Religion binds things together, while science takes things into its part. We can only learn science by identifying its part like ecology, geology, etc. In spite of the contrast, both of them are always together and there’s no clear separation of them. That’s why if you believe in God, you should believe in science. That’s how we will believe in God’s power more and more. There are some models for relating science and religion, e.g. NOMA, consonance, etc.

4.  Science is huge. Science is a global phenomenal, not only a western idea. Science happens in all over the world, including Indonesia. Indonesia is very important for the development of the evolutionary theory.

5.    Science is always changing. It depends on human interpretation. The lineages among creatures always change as the result of human research with science. What we interpret today as the definition of evolution may be change in the future for about 10-20 years later. This world is also may be going towards and changing.

6.  There’s no clear description about the first human in the world. But based on the theological study which related to science evidence, It is possible that the human called Adam is the first homo sapiens, the first human who have ability to think smart and make consideration of everything in life. May be there are another “homo” before Adam but they are different. That’s only an assumption based on theological study and research in science.

7.    It’s ok to be different because that’s what makes the world complex.