Biography:

Marwa Elshakry is Associate Professor of history at Columbia University and is currently working on a book manuscript, Reading Darwin in the Middle East

Abstract:

Beyond Belief and Unbelief: Darwin in Global Perspective

Although Darwins name is now often connected to religious skepticism, this was not always the case. Taking examples from the Middle East, India, China and elsewhere, this talk will examine the ways in which Darwins ideas were used across the world to reinforce particular local traditions of belief. Far from signalling the inevitability of a rift between religious belief and unbelief, therefore, these examples show how the encounter between evolution and religion was far less antagonistic than many think today or that the late twentieth century rise of a global Creationism might suggest.