Lecture to compare evolution, creationism

Moorpark College will present the final lecture in the Year of Science and Religion, "The Evolution-Creation Struggle: An American Story," 7 p.m. Mon., May 7 in the Moorpark College Performing Arts Center, 7075 Campus Drive.

Admission is free but seating is limited.

In this lecture, Michael Ruse, an authority on Darwinian evolutionary thought, will point out some similarities between evolutionist and creationist thinking, two opposed but closely related responses to a loss of religious faith in the Western world.

Exploring the underlying philosophical commitments oevolutionists, he reveals thathose most hostile to religion are just as evangelical as their fundamentalist opponents. He also demonstrates thathese two diametrically opposed ideologies have, since the Enlightenment, engaged in a struggle for the privilege of defining human origins, moral values and the nature of reality.

Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He is the founder and editor of the journal Biology and Philosophy. His book, "The Evolution-Creation Struggle," Harvard University Press in 2005, was named one of that year's best academic books by New York Magazine.