Is There a Middle Ground Between Evolution and Creationism?

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There is a controversy outside of professional evolution, about evolution versus creationism. But there's also kind of a middle ground, and i don't want to hide it. Even among nearly all biologists tas, there's a slight unease with any sort of what we call a telos. And so they sas we know, they think these animals can't, you know, they don't have purpose. They wouldn't understand purposeand in point of fact, i think that atchi, ironically, turns out to be the case.

Evolution by natural selection is one of the rare scientific theories that resonates within the wider culture as much as it does within science. But as much as people know about evolution, we also find the growth of corresponding myths. Simon Conway Morris is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist who’s new book is From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution. He is known as a defender of evolutionary convergence and adaptationism — even when there is a mass extinction, he argues, the resulting shake-up simply accelerates the developments evolution would have made anyway. We talk about this, and also about the possible role of God in an evolutionary worldview.

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Simon Conway Morris received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Cambridge. He is currently an emeritus professor of evolutionary paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge. Among his awards are the Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences and the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London.

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