Oxford scholar speaks during Founders Week

The Catholic and Dominican Institute at Mount Saint Mary College, along with the natural sciences department, will host a lecture, "Has Science Eliminated the Need for a Creator?" on October 5 at 7 pm.

The free public event, part of Founders Week at the college, will be held in Hudson Hall Auditorium on campus, 330 Powell Avenue, Newburgh.

Guest speaker, Dr. William E. Carroll (pictured at left), the Thomas Aquinas Fellow in theology and science at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and a member of the faculty of theology of the University of Oxford, will explore the ways in which contemporary cosmology and evolutionary biology are used to deny the doctrine of creation, or sometimes affirm it.

He will also explain how 13th century Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas's analysis of creation and natural science can help eliminate confusion in contemporary discussions on the topic.

Carroll, a European intellectual and science historian, has researched and taught about the reception of Aristotelian science in medieval Islam, Judaism, and Christianity and the development of the doctrine of creation; and the encounter between Galileo and the Inquisition.

Author of Creation and Science (London, 2011) and other books, Carroll holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MA and PhD from the University of Michigan.

Founders Week at the college celebrates the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7 and the four Dominican sisters who helped found Mount Saint Mary College.

For information, contact Charles Zola at 845-569-3160 or Charles.zola@msmc.edu