Webcast of McGill Islam & Evolution Symposium

The webcast of the all the presentations at the McGill Islam & Evolution symposium is now available. You may need to download a particular software to see the presentations (the McGill website will automatically direct you to that). Also, note that the buffering of lectures takes a little bit of time - so be patient when you are loading them.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a wonderful time there and it was an enormous learning experience for me. In addition, it was fascinating to learn about the challenges of conducting evolution study in the Muslim world. The last three lectures below present some of the preliminary findings from the survey. In the morning session, Taner Edis and I provided the political and cultural context for evolution debates in the Muslim world and Josh Rosenau compared Islamic creationism with similar movements in the US. Also check out the talk by Ehab Abouheif if you are at all interested in the question of Islam and evolution compatibility. While not the main subject of his talk, Ehab's work on ants sounds fascinating and provides a good example of evolution and how it helps us understand differences in species.

Here are the links along with the titles of the talks. You can pick and choose (except for Don. He has to watch the whole symposium :) ):

Taner Edis (Truman State University): Rejecting materialism: Muslim responses to conceptual frameworks of modern science

Salman Hameed (Hampshire College): Muslim perspectives on evolution and science & religion

Josh Rosenau (National Center for Science Education): From the pillars of Islam to the pillars of creation

Ehab Abouheif (McGill University): Bridging Islam & evolution through the secret world of ants: The socio-political and scientific struggles of a Muslim evolutionary biologist

Saouma BouJaoude (American University of Beirut): Egyptian and Lebanese secondary school students' conceptions of biological evolution and their relationships to religious beliefs

A. Uner Turgay (McGill University) and Minoo Derayeh (York University): Creation and evolution in the Canadian and Turkish schools: A case study

Jason Wiles (Syracuse University) and Anila Asghar (Johns Hopkins University): Islam, culture. and evolutionary science: Evolution education in Indonesia AND The paradox of evolution education in Pakistan

The discussion is still not online. I will add it to this post when its available. Also see this earlier post: Biology textbooks and religion in Pakistan and the US.