Forum for Eksistens og Videnskab: Darwin

Forum for Eksistens og Videnskab præsenterer hermed forårets program
Som i mange andre sammenhænge er forårsprogrammet præget af Darwins dobbelte jubilæum.


17. Marts 2009 kl. 20.00 (OBS)

Darwin i dag

Oplæg ved
Lektor, cand. scient: Jes Søe Pedersen, Professor, lic.theol. Niels Henrik Gregersen
og Professor, dr.phil. Frederik Stjernfelt.

De tre debattører vil komme med et oplæg om evolutionsteorien og dens status i dag set fra deres respektive fagområder: biologi, teologi og humaniora. Derefter vil der være diskussion.

Sted: Den teologiske kældercafé, Købemagergade 44 over gården
Entre 20 kr.


29. april 2009 kl. 19.00

Theology Celebrating Darwin’s Legacy?
Lecture by professor Lluis Oviedo

It may seem a provocation to invite theologians to recognize the merits of Darwin, whose second centenary we celebrate this year. Darwinism has been rather in the past cause of struggle and hard contrast for theology, as it challenged several assumptions of traditional Christian faith. Even if some scientists still embrace Darwin’s ideas as a weapon against religion, a different attitude arises in the last years both, by theologians and scientists, claiming Darwin’s legacy as a good basis for fruitful exchange between science and theology. Theologians even discover now that the new framework provided by the evolutionary theory helps to better tackle former intractable problems, like making sense of the suffering in the world, despite the expected divine goodness.

Lluis Oviedo is born near Valencia in Spain (1958), is full professor of Theological Anthropology at the Antonianum University; and invited professor in Gregoriana University – both in Rome – for questions of religion, society and science.
Has published the following books: Secularization as a Problem; Altruism and Charity; The Christian Faith and the New Social Challenges.
Currently researches in the field of cognitive science of religion and its theological impact, and issues about secularization process and religious social dynamics.


Sted: Det teologiske fakultet, Købmagergade 44, AUD 1. ( gården)
Entre 20 kr.


4 Juni 2009 kl. 19.00
The impact of Darwinism on Christian theology

Lecture by Ma, ph.d. Christopher Southgate

There are four aspects to this subject, as usually considered. The lecture will consider briefly the challenge to literal readings of Genesis 1, and to the argument from design in natural theology. Both of these were under threat from other lines of argument before the development of Darwinism. The third challenge posed by Darwinism, historically, was to the status of human beings. I will show that, once the ‘Copernican shift’ away from utter human distinctiveness is made, evolutionary theory offers positive ways of thinking about the material world, and about incarnation. I will draw briefly on new work on the semiotics of incarnation, and on the concept of deification. Finally the lecture will turn to the principal challenge posed by Darwinism to Christian theology, namely the problem of suffering within evolution, and here I will develop thinking published in my recent monograph The Groaning of Creation (2008), acknowledging the depth of the problem, and indicating lines of argument by which to begin to address it.

Chris Southgate trained originally as a research biochemist. He has taught for the Dept on the science-religion debate (and related areas such as environmental ethics) since 1993. He is currently a Research Fellow on the project 'The Use of the Bible in Environmental Ethics', funded by the AHRC, and Principal Investigator on the project 'Information and the Origin of Life', collaborating with the Dept's Honorary University Fellow Dr Andrew Robinson. This latter project is funded by the Science and Transcendence Advanced Research Series.
Chris teaches the undergraduate modules 'Evolution, God and Gaia' and 'God and the Physicists', and is offering the new MA module 'The human animal: evolution, ensoulment, extinction?' in 2008-9. He has two research students at present and welcomes enquiries from others interested in his areas of expertise.
Chris's new book 'The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution an the Problem of Evil' was released by Westminster John Knox Press in June 2008. He is also the editor of 'God, Humanity and the Cosmos' (2nd ed., Continuum, 2005), a standard text in the science-religion field.
Chris is also the author of five collections of poetry, the most recent being 'Easing the Gravity Field: poems of science and love' (Shoestring, 2006) and is working with New York University on a multimedia project based on his biographical poem on TS Eliot, 'A Love and its Sounding' (Salzburg, 1997).

Sted: Den teologiske kældercafé, Købemagergade 44 over gården
Entre 20 kr.