Calvin News

Dr. William Dembski (left), a well-known researcher and author, will lead a seminar at Calvin College from June 19 to July 28 on "Design, Self-Organization and the Integrity of Creation." 
Dembski's seminar students will be 13 faculty members from a variety of Christian and secular colleges and universities around the world. Seminar participants will look at a plethora of recent hot-button issues at the crossroads of faith and science -- everything from intelligent design to self organization to creation. 
A notable feature of this seminar, dealing with the controversial subject of intelligent design, is that it will have a "point-counterpoint" component. Such critics of the intelligent design movement as Michael Ruse, Harold Morowitz, and Howard Van Till will be invited to participate in the discussions, along with advocates William Dembski, Steve Meyer, and Paul Nelson. Calvin professor Del Ratzsch will moderate the discussions. He is a professor of the philosophy of science who, in 1996, wrote a book called Battle of the Beginnings, which examined the philosophical underpinnings of the creation/evolution debates. 
Underwritten by the Fieldstead Institute, the seminar is one of four to be sponsored this summer by the Calvin College Seminars in Christian Scholarship. The stated purpose for all of Calvin's summer seminars is to "promote a strong Christian voice in the academy by addressing issues of current debate within various disciplines from the perspective of a deep Christian commitment and encouraging the production of first-order scholarship." 
In Dembski the design seminar has an apt and able leader. He has doctoral degrees in mathematics and philosophy. His book The Design Inference was published by Cambridge University Press. Another book, Intelligent Design, was named a top book by Christianity Today. 
Dembski's students also will be able. They represent not just a variety of schools, but also a variety of disciplines. One is a theology professor at St. Bonaventure. Another teaches philosophy at Kent State. Still another teaches physics in South Korea. And three are Calvin College professors, representing geology, physics and biology. 
Appropriately, the seminar participants will do much of their work in the shadows of Calvin's new John Doc DeVries Hall of Science. That $18 million facility is devoted to the life sciences. And it is named for a former Calvin professor whose popular book, "Beyond the Atom," led discussions of the compatibility of the Christian faith and the study of the sciences in the Christian Reformed Church and helped gain acceptance of the place of natural sciences at Calvin College. 
Calvin began its summer seminar series in 1996, funded by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. There have been 155 participants, representing 96 institutions and 22 denominations from around the globe, in the seminars and those participants have made presentations (53), published articles (23) and done books (10) as a result of their time at Calvin. 
This summer will bring another 50 participants to campus for four seminars, including Dembski's on intelligent design, "Christianity as a World Religion" with Yale's Dr. Lamin Sanneh, "Modernity, Postmodernity, and the Future of Hope" with Yale's Dr. Miroslav Volf, and "Kierkegaard: A Man for All Disciplines" with Calvin's Dr. C. Stephen Evans.