Expert to lecture on evolution, creationism

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Michael Ruse, a world-renowned expert on the relationship between science and religion, presents “Evolution vs. Creationism” at 12:30 p.m. April 3, in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University.

The free lecture, which is open to the public, is part of the Dr. Thomas and Albert Shipka Speaker Series.

Ruse is the Lucyle T. Wekmeister professor and director of the History and Philosophy of Science Program at Florida State University. Before coming to Florida State in 2000, he taught at the University of Guelph for 35 years.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Bristol in 1962, a master’s degree from McMaster University in 1964, and a Ph.D. from the University of Bristol in 1970. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has honorary doctorates from the University of Bergen, McMaster University and the University of New Brunswick.

Ruse started the journal Biology and Philosophy, has edited “Evolution: The First Four Billion Years,” and has been profiled in many publications. His many books include “The Evolution-Creation Struggle” and “Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?” Ruse traces the ongoing debate of evolution vs. creationism back to the Enlightenment — to the loss of religious faith in the Western world — and reveals how the two diametrically opposed (yet, in many ways, similar) ideologies have engaged in a struggle for the privilege of defining human origins, moral values and the nature of reality.