Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information Office
                                           SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
    Date: 2/17/98
      Contact:                           Carol Dotson   65

LECTURES ON EVOLUTION AT SOUTHEASTERN MARCH 5
     HAMMOND, LA -- Southeastern Louisiana University's department of History and
Government is hosting a program of lectures on Evolution, Thursday March 5 at 2 pm, 3:30 pm
and 7:30 pm. The program theme is "'From So Simple a Beginning': Darwin's Evolutionary
Legacy."
     Speakers include Timothy Madigan, editor of Free Inquiry Magazine and Harvard
University Visiting Scholar, H. James Birx, Ph.D.
     At 2 pm,  Madigan, will speak on "Ethics and Evolution" in the Music Recital Hall. He is
also co-editor of Challenges to the Enlightenment: In Defense of Reason and Science and
teachers courses in area colleges on ethics, critical thinking and philosophy of religion. Madigan
will draw from the work of Darwin in examining the connection between evolution and ethics. 
He will address the question of the origin of morality, discuss the work of philosopher James
Rachels and the work of primatologist Frans de Waal.
      Harvard University Visiting Scholar, H. James Birx, Ph.D., will talk on Human
Evolution at 3:30 pm in Pursley Hall. Birx will speak again at 7:30 in the Student Union Theatre
on "Darwin and Evolution: Critical Reflections". Birx, a professor of anthropology at Canisus
College, is the author of Interpreting Evolution: Darwin and Teilhard de Chardin and the
CHOICE award-winning book, Theories of Evolution. His lecture on Darwin and Evolution will
focus on the influences contributing to Darwin's formulation of the theory of evolution. 
     Copies of Birx's books and issues of Free Inquiry magazine will be available for sale. All
of the lectures are free and open to the public. For more information call 549-2109. 
                                                            
 -SLU-
      
         This press release is available on the World Wide Web at
www.selu.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/newssp97.htm