| Check out the website www.umcrookston.edu/EnviroEthics for more info and schedule |
Posted 04/17/2000
Contact: Andrew Svec, 218-281-8380
UMC and The Woodside Center to Host Conference on Environmental Ethics, Lectures in Science and Religion
From Thursday, April 27, through Monday, May 1, 2000, the University of Minnesota, Crookston (UMC), and The Woodside Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, located in Mentor, Minnesota, will host a combined conference on environmental ethics and public policy and a lecture series on science and religion. The event will feature workshops, lectures, roundtable discussions, and two book signings. The lecture series and most of the activities of the conference are open to the public without charge.
According to the conference convener, Dr. James W. Thomasson, a Philosophy professor at UMC and executive director of The Woodside Center, “This is a special opportunity for people from the Crookston, Grand Forks, Fargo area and beyond to hear speakers of international reputation, addressing issues vital to our time and region.”
Featured guests of the conference and lecture series are John F. Haught and Holmes Rolston, III, both prolific writers and lecturers.
Haught, Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Science and Religion at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, is the author of ten books, his most recent being God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution. He is just back from an international conference in Paris, where he was a keynote speaker.
Rolston, a British scholar, is now University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. In 1997-98 he delivered the renowned Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, which appeared under the title Genes, Genesis and God: Values and their Origins in Natural and Human History. He has traveled extensively as a Nobel lecturer in science and religion and is the author of seven books.
Both Haught and Rolston will be featured at book signings sponsored by the University of Minnesota, Crookston, Bookstore.
Primary areas addressed by the Conference on Environmental Ethics and Public Policy will focus on the social, ethical and legal issues related to research and practice in business and agribusiness. From views of nature, ownership of land and resources, the uses of air, water, and soil to pollution, global warming, the use, disposal and dispersal of chemicals, and the like, the conference will discuss and assess the relationship between the human community and the broader sustaining environment that makes life possible.
As a targeted lecture series within the broader conference, the formal presentations will discuss the relation of scientific and religious understanding. “In a time of sustained genetic experimentation, changing world views, shifts in cultural understanding, and conflicts between established religious understanding and social change,” notes Thomasson, “this is a topic of great urgency.”
Both featured guests will take the title and focus of their lectures from their current books. Haught’s lecture, “God after Darwin”, will look at ways in which advances in scientific understanding have impacted on our understanding of traditional concepts of God. In reviewing Haught’s thesis, British writer William Cotton writes: “Haught shows clearly that cosmic and biological evolution deeply enriches theological conviction, and he reveals a robust and intelligent belief in God.”
For his part, Rolston will look at genetic research, theories of the origin of being, and their relation to the origin of values in human culture. His work has been evaluated by American writer William Grassie: “He interprets genetics and evolutionary biology to present the possibility of trans-scendent values operating in nature and culture.”
For further information on the Conference on Environmental Ethics and Public Policy and the Lectures in Science and Religion, contact James or Nancy Thomasson, The Woodside Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, 218-637-6600, or email to woodside1@gvtel.com or jthomass@mail.crk.umn.edu.
A website at www.umcrookston.edu/EnviroEthics has also been established for the event