One of the 20th century’s great thinkers, Holmes Rolston III, offered a small ripple of his big-vision thoughts – on cherishing the environment and feeling awe for the evolution of life – with two low-key presentations in a morning chapel and an afternoon colloquium at 草莓社区 on October 23.

Rolston summed up his message with these pithy words: “The start-up looks like a set-up.”

In the colloquium, Rolston focused on whether the big-bang origin of all matter and its subsequent exponential movement toward increasing complexity and diversity possibly “signals a transcendent presence” in the universe. He stressed that what occurred during the first few microseconds of time following the big bang has led through various uniquely synchronized processes to precisely what was necessary to eventually support the beginnings of the forms of life known to us today.

Referencing his latest book, (Columbia University Press, 2010), Rolston elaborated on three big-bang points he sees over billions of years: (1) the start-up of the universe, involving the origin of matter-energy; (2) the explosion of life on earth; and (3) the development of the human mind.

Awesome human brain

Rolston pointed out that the human brain emerged suddenly about 1.5-2 million years ago and became the fastest growing organ yet seen. The development in humans of the ability to speak and form words to communicate has made non-genetic learning possible, using sophisticated methods of transmitting knowledge and culture. Unique to humans, Rolston argued, was the development of self-consciousness, leading us to detect the presence of something greater than ourselves.

In spite of the awesome capacity of the human mind today, Rolston emphasized that “some things are over our heads [and] … we just don’t know,” as in the question of whether evolution has happened due to design, chance, necessity or other factors.

Rolston’s talk drew faculty members and administrators from almost every corner of the campus – , , , , , , , , , , , , , graduate studies, and the .

Rolston was clearly at home with his material – moving efficiently through his lecture points, echoed on his PowerPoint slides – before he concluded by showing an iconic scene from the 1968 movie 2001 Space Odyssey regarding the gap between a primate’s ability to wield a bone as a hammer and humans’ space travel.

Father of environmental ethics

Rolston is credited with being the first scholar to articulate a philosophical basis for protecting the environment from human abuse. He thus helped to usher in the environmental protection movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He has written numerous books, book chapters and journal articles on the subject, including Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press, 1988) and Conserving Natural Value (Columbia University Press, 1994)

At age 80, Rolston is one of several dozen living recipients of the prestigious , awarded annually since 1972 to an individual “who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.” Rolston was the 2003 recipient, joining such influential people as Mother Teresa, Nobel Physics Laureate Charles Hard Townes, novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Prison Fellowship founder Charles W. Colson, and the Dalai Lama. The 2013 Templeton Prize went to Desmond Tutu, along with $1.7 million in award money.

says he has written chapters in 80 books and over 100 articles and been cited by scholars over 1,000 times. It says his words have been translated, reviewed and cited in journals and books in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian, Slovak, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese.

Native of the Valley

During his visit to EMU, Rolston alluded to growing up in the Shenandoah Valley, in Staunton, as the son and grandson of Presbyterian pastors. In his first adult career, he became an ordained minister and served as a Presbyterian pastor for nine years.

“I grew up barefoot, roaming the woods, in the rural countryside. I always had a kind of interest in the natural world that came from … having spent a lot of time with the ground under my feet and the sky over my head,” he said in a 1997 article in the Denver Post’s Empire Magazine.

After earning a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1958 and an MA in the philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1968, Rolston gained renown for his arguments in favor of viewing the natural world as having intrinsic value beyond its usefulness to humans; Rolston felt there was a religious imperative for respecting nature or creation. Others, such as poets, painters and explorers, had expressed such feelings, but Rolston was one of the first to approach the topic as an academic philosopher, laying the groundwork for the field of environmental ethics.

Rolston has been based at Colorado State University since the late 1960s and was named Distinguished Professor there in 1992. In 1997-98, he was the at the University of Edinburgh, joining an illustrious group of lecturers since 1881 that includes Reinhold Niebuhr, John Dewey, Albert Schweitzer, Arnold Toynbee, Iris Murdoch, Charles Taylor and Steven Pinker.

Rolston visited EMU as a guest of the , an EMU group promoting dialogue between science and Christian faith.

Nation will challenge the long-held assumption that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor, was arrested, imprisoned and executed because of his involvement in plots to assassinate Hitler. ?Instead, Nation will argue that it was Bonhoeffer’s costly discipleship—which led a Nazi official to call him “a pacifist and enemy of the state”—that led to his arrest, imprisonment and execution.

Bonhoeffer is known for his popular books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.? He is less well-known for his early and active opposition to the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and the “new monasticism” he introduced to the seminary he directed. He was also seen as so dangerous that he was banned from public speaking and publishing.

This presentation is a summary of a book Nation is writing with two EMS graduates, Anthony Siegrist and Daniel Umbel. ?Nation will present his summary of their research at the University Colloquium in Martin Chapel from 3:30-5. The book is scheduled for publication next year by Baker Academic Press. ?This book will be the first to make the argument that Bonhoeffer was not involved in any assassination attempts.? But as importantly, it will attempt to re-claim the central legacy of Bonhoeffer, a call to discipleship.

“If we are successful in our argument,” said Nation, “It will require a complete reexamination of the Bonhoeffer legacy.”

University colloquiums are free and open to the public.

Dr. Good, a 1982 EMU alumna, will speak on “Work and hope: Transnational livelihoods, Mennonites from Mexico, and social exclusion” 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 26, in Martin Chapel of the seminary building at EMU (). A discussion period will follow her talk.

Good’s primary research interests are related to the development of the concept and practices of social inclusion in policy formulation and the delivery of social services and the exploration of poverty and subjective social exclusion as individual and group trauma and strategies for collective healing and reconciliation.

The complex relationship between the state and culturally-distinct communities, such as Old Order Mennonites and Old Colony Mennonites, has been central in both her professional practice and research.

Her PhD research, completed in 2005 at the University of Toronto, was a qualitative study of the common sense idea of social inclusion and the experience of social exclusion among Low German Mennonites from Mexico in Ontario, Canada.

She has applied her conceptual model of social exclusion, deriving from this research, in a national community-university research alliance with lone mothers on welfare.

She is currently the principal investigator of a three-year study of social inclusion and exclusion and the experience of “choice” for migrant women from Mexico and Guatemala working in agriculture in Canada.

The presentation is open to the public. For more information, contact the provost’s office, 432-4105.