Conferences of the Second Research Week – “Beyond Darwin” and “The origin of life on Earth”

segunda semanaWe published the filming material of both conferences from the Second Week of Interdisciplinary Research on “Determinism and Indeterminism”, by Miguel de Asúa and Rafael Vicuña.

If life can emerge form the inorganic or if epigenetic processes open a gap for indeterminism are some of the questions that biologists, philosophers and theologists have to face. The Second Week of Interdisciplinary Research offered a space for dialogue among over 30 academic fellows of national and international universities. We give you the videos form both of the conferences that took place on August 4th and 5th.

Miguel de Asúa is Doctor in Medicine (UBA) and in History (Universidad de Notre Dame) and is currently Professor at Universidad de San Martín. He opened the day with his conference “Beyond Darwin”. During his exposition, he made reference to the posible dialogue between the Darwinian theory and the theology of Creation. “¿Are Darwin and the Bible exclusionary terms of a dilemma?” Miguel Asúa explores the vicissitudes of the idea of organic evolution in its relations with Christianity.

 

On the next day, August 5th, the Professor Rafael Vicuña, Doctor in Molecular Biology for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York) and Professor at Universidad Católica de Chile, he talked about “The origin of life on Earth”. Chances are, asseverates Dr. Vicuña, that life arose through a series of stages of increasing complexity, all complying with the laws of physical chemistry. We have no idea how this could have happened, but probably in the future we will be able to offer a plausible hypothesis with broad consensus. Today there are too many, which reflects our current ignorance.  In any case, this hypothesis will not serve to rule out or to confirm the existence of a Creator. Moreover, we would be in this situation even if we were to fully understand, from the material point of view, how the universe and life work.