IMPROVING EVOLUTION ADVOCACY: TRANSLATING VACCINE INTERVENTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION WARS

When considering the persuasive characteristics and prospective influences of Darwin-skeptic mass media, uncertainties remain about how to reciprocally promote evolutionary theory to skeptical audiences. This study aims to improve evolution advocacy by translating some of the most successful methods of science endorsement to Evolution Wars contexts. In particular, strategies used to address vaccine hesitancies and enhance immunization uptake policies are reinterpreted for those seeking to improve pro-evolution communications to religious publics. What results are three recommendation categories described as General Guiding Principles, Proximate Interventions, and Auxiliary Interventions.     

THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUOUS CREATION PART I: HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY USE

The concept of continuous creation is now widely used in the context of reflections on the dialogue between science and religion. The first part of this research work seeks to understand its meaning through a twofold elaboration: (1) the historical setting of the three philosophical trends in which this concept was developed: scholastic (conservation), Cartesian (conservation through repetition of the creative act at each instant), and dynamic (interpreting the emergence of radical and contingent novelty in nature as a sign of the continuity of creation); (2) a philosophical and theological critique of the concept of continuous creation regarding the question of the relationship between change and creation, in the light of its highly polymorphous contemporary use, and, in opposition, its absence within the Catholic Magisterium. This work opens the field a further step toward reflection on a renewed concept of continuous creation.     

Western and Russian Traditions of Big History: A Philosophical Insight

Summary  Big History – an integral conception of the past since the Big Bang until today – is a novel subject of cross-disciplinary interest. The concept was construed in the 1980–1990s simultaneously in different countries, after relevant premises had matured in the sciences and humanities.Various versions and traditions of Big History are considered in the article. Particularly, most of the Western authors emphasize the idea of equilibrium, and thus reduce cosmic, biological, and social evolution to the mass-energy processes; the informational parameter involving all mental and spiritual aspects are seen as epiphenomena of material structures” complication that do not play their own role in evolution. In Russian tradition ascending to A. Bogdanov, E. Bauer, I. Prigogine, and E. Jantsch, sustainable non-equilibrium patterns are used. This implies attention to the pan-material sources and evolution of mental capacities and spiritual culture (as basic anti-entropy instruments) and humans” growing intervention in the material processes on Earth and outside it.The non-equilibrium approach in the context of modern control and self-organization theories, alters the portrayal of the past, and still more dramatically, estimation of the civilization’s potential perspectives.     

Reifying Analogy in Natural Theology

Karl Schmitz-Moormann argues that the doctrines of God and Creation, usually explicated in Roman Catholic theology by using the analogy of being, must rather be conceived in light of evolution and an analogy of becoming. God the Trinity, characterized by unity, information, and freedom, provides the image toward which the creation tends in its evolutionary processes. Informed by Teilhard and others, the author hereby provides more of a new research program for theology's engagement with natural science than a fully developed theology.     

Evolutionary Ethics: Its Origin and Contemporary Face

The development of modern evolutionary ethics began shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection . Early discussions were plagued by several problems. First, evolutionary ethical explanations were dependent on group-selection accounts of social behavior (especially the explanation of altruism). Second, they seem to violate the philosophical principle that "ought" statements cannot be derived from "is" statements alone (values cannot be derivedfrom facts alone). Third, evolutionary ethics appeared to be biologically deterministic, deemed incompatible with the free will required for ethics to be possible. Fourth, social policies based on evolutionary theory (for example, eugenics in the early part of this century) seemed patently unethical. Sociobiology (which coalesced as a field of study with Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis , 1975) addressed several of these problems and provided a rich framework and a new impetus for evolutionary ethics. The lingering problems were the philosophical is-ought barrier and biological determinism. After tracing the early and more recent development of evolutionary ethics, I argue that the remaining problems can be surmounted and an incipient evolutionary ethics can be defended. Thoroughgoing evolutionaryethics must await theoretical developments in neurobiology and cognitive science.     

进化,从自然主义到自由主义

生物进化体现了生物世界从简单到复杂,从低级到高级的普遍现象,整个进化史可以人类社会出现的界划发为自然状态的进化和人类智慧,意志指导下逐渐展开的人工进化或自由进化,人类的进步必须要和自然环境和谐发展科学必将吸取系统论,理性论和人文精神而成为人类迈向自由地的有力武器。     

Reviews

Books Reviewed: Is God a Virus? Genes, Culture and Religion byJohn Bowker Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues byIan Barbour The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley Nature's Grace: Essays on H. N. Wieman's Finite Theism by Marvin C. Shaw The Divine Constitution by Jeh-Tween Gong