A Talk by a Paleontologist on Human Origins

For my class Religion and Scientific Thought, I’ve invited, via Zoom, Dr. Berhane Asfaw, who is an Ethiopian paleontologist. Our guest speaker is based in Ethiopia. Dr. Berhane is a co-discoverer, along with Tim White, et al., of Australopithecus garhi in 1999. It’s a great privilege for us to have a scientist, who spent about 30 years working on human origins, to speak to my students for free. Dr. Berhane is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Along with Dr. Berhane, my former freshman history professor in Ethiopia, who is an archaeologist (PhD from Cambridge University), will also join.

In this class, we have been studying theological/biblical and scientific issues concerning the historical Adam by reading two major works, viz., The Genealogical Adam and Eve by Joshua Swamidass, who is a computational biologist and an evangelical Christian, and In Quest of the Historical Adam by one of the most influential Christian philosophers and theologians, William L. Craig. Dr. Swamidass has interacted with my students via Zoom.

This note is an INVITATION to anyone at HU who is interested in learning something valuable about human origins via Zoom, a link for which I’ll provide in another post soon. The Zoom event will be during my class time on April 13, on Thursday, from 3:00-4:15 p.m. The classroom, for those who would like to be in the classroom, is the classroom in RichLyn Library. Bringing your students to this event will be great.