The talk was presented as part of the McMullen and Thompson lecture series.

     Ruse focused on the history of the creation versus evolution debate.

     "This is a lot more than just a simple question of religion or of science," said Ruse.

     Ruse began the lecture with an overview of Christianity explaining how the belief did not begin with Jesus but was instead a religion endorsed and added to by Jesus. Many saints and important events were discussed in forming the Christian religion.

     The Enlightenment was also pivotal to this argument because during the Enlightenment faith was debated with reason. Christians began to drift towards other forms of Christianity. Other people began to drift towards scientific explanations for phenomena previously explained by religious means.

     Next, the talk moved onto Darwin and his origins. Darwin was raised in the Anglican faith and originally went to school to enter the clergy. While in school, he was asked to join the crew of the H.M.S. Beagle.

     While on the ship, he spent some time in the Galapagos Islands and found that the finches were largely similar but different in small ways on the different islands of the Galapagos.

     By studying the tortoises and finches of the Galapagos, Darwin concluded that animals change over generations and adapt to better suite survival in their environments.

     Since the theory was publicly posed in Darwin’s publication of the "Origin of Species" in 1859, it has come under scrutiny from religious communities.

     A long standing stigma that was put under criticism in the lecture was why people must choose to be evolutionists or religious people and not both.