The Tampa Bay Coalition of Reason
will present
Darwin Day 2023
on Saturday, February 18,
beginning at 2:00 p.m.
This will be an in-person event at the Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater at 2470 Nursery Rd., as well as online via Zoom.
Tickets for the presentation are available at https://www.atheistsofflorida.org/darwin-day-2023/.
We are very pleased to present two outstanding speakers:
Bertha Vazquez is director of education for the Center  for Inquiry, director of the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES), a program of the Center for Inquiry and a project of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Since its inception in April 2015, TIES has presented over 300 professional development opportunities for middle school science teachers across the country, providing them with free resources to effectively teach their state evolution standards in their classrooms. In December of 2021, Bertha and fifteen fellow TIES presenters, published a book titled On Teaching Evolution.
Ryan Cragun is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Tampa and Director of its Honors Program. He is the author of numerous academic papers and ten books, most of which report on his research on religion and its rapidly evolving impact on society. Ryan is a good friend of the Coalition of Reason and has spoken to our group several times. For more detail on his work, go to his website: https://www.ryantcragun.com.
The title of Dr. Cragun’ s presentation is: Evolution and Religion: Natural Exploits and Artificial Selection.
A brief summary:
There are at least two ways to think about evolution and religion. First, have humans evolved in a fashion that fosters religiosity? Second, have religions evolved over time? In this far-reaching talk, I’ll examine both questions, drawing on recent research in social science to address whether humans are “innately religious” and whether religions evolve.