The Clements Department of History

at SMU invites you to

A STANTON SHARP LECTURE

ANTI-EVOLUTION IN AMERICA:

FROM CREATION SCIENCE TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Presented by Ronald L. Numbers

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Friday, September 18, 2009

Reception at 3:30 pm

Lecture at 4:00 pm

Southern Methodist University

McCord Auditorium ■ 306 Dallas Hall

3225 University ■ Dallas, TX

Despite Charles Darwin’s announced effort to overthrow “the dogma of separate creations,” organized opposition to his revolution did not appear until the early 1920s.  But even William Jennings Bryan’s crusade to eradicate Darwinism from schools and churches readily accepted the paleontological evidence for the antiquity of life on earth.  Not until the “scientific creationism” of the 1960s and 1970s did anti-evolutionists insist on the recent appearance of life and assign most of the geological column to the year of Noah’s flood.  During the past fifteen years or so a new, non-biblical opposition to evolution has emerged under the banner of “intelligent design,” which seeks to “reclaim science in the name of God” and to change the very rules governing the practice of science. 

Presented by Ronald L. Numbers, the Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author or editor of some 30 books, including Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths about Science and Religion (‘09), Science Christianity in Pulpit and Pew (‘07), Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion and Gender (‘99), Darwinism Comes to America; (‘98), and The Creationists (’92 and ‘06).  He is past president of both the American society of Church History and the History of Science Society and currently the president of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science.  A former Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the International Academy of the History of Science.

The Stanton Sharp Lectures are sponsored by the Clements Department of History and are free and open to the public. ■ Seating is not reserved. ■ Visitor parking is available in the parking garages at Ownby and Binkley ($1 per hour) or SMU Blvd. and Airline ($5 per day). ■ For more information, call 214-768-2967 ■ e-mail hist@smu.edu ■ or visit our website at www.smu.edu/history/sharp.