The Science Religion Society program at Trinity College Theological School – which is part of the United Faculty of Theology – with the assistance of the Melbourne College of Divinity, is sponsoring a conference to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s, The Origin of Species. The theme of the conference, After Darwin, is set out below. The conference will be held at The Centre for Theology and Ministry from 21-23 July, 2009. Dr. Christopher Southgate from the Department of Theology at Exeter University will commence the conference by giving a public lecture at 7.00pm, 21 July. The lecture will be via an interactive satellite link in the Woodhouse Theatre at The University of Melbourne.

Call for Papers

This is a call for papers.  Sessions will be for forty minutes including ten minutes for questions.  Intending presenters should send an abstract of 300 words to Revd Dr Stephen Ames, sames@trinity.unimelb.edu.au  by Friday 6 March, 2009.

After Darwin

Are traditional forms of religion and Darwinism compatible? While some consider religion and Darwinism to offer opposed accounts of the kind of world we live in, there have always been those who espoused both. After Darwin aims to celebrate the exciting stories of those who have made the significant intellectual and imaginative shifts needed to hold together with integrity the worldviews of traditional  forms of religion and Darwinism. The conference is also an opportunity to probe the coherence and integrity of these stories and likewise challenge the more familiar stories of opposition, - atheism, creationism, intelligent design - typically presented as the dominant stories about religion and Darwinism. 
 
Participants are also invited to explore the difference a positive engagement between Darwinism and religion can make to the ways in which we understand our lives, compared to only espousing one of these. What difference, for example, do such positive engagements make to understanding our lives in a more than human context, both ecologically and theologically?   Papers addressing these issues are invited from a variety of disciplinary and religious perspectives. While in its emphasis the conference will reflect that the more prominent public engagement has been between Christianity and Darwinism, the organisers especially welcome papers from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic perspectives that address the conference theme.
 

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