En route to the International Big History Association conference in Grand Rapids, I made a pilgrimage to Hell—a small town northwest of Ann Arbor. And while Hell, Michigan, was established in 1841, 18 years before the publication of The Origins of Species, it was curious, to me at least, that Darwin Road leads straight to Hell, with a few twists and turns along the way through Livingston County. The thing is, Hell really does freeze over during the cold Michigan winters. Unfortunately, this comic juxtaposition describes the way many Christians and Muslims still think about Darwinism and evolution—yet another reason why we need to teach Big History in our schools and universities.
The solution is evolution. Evolve!
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William Grassie has a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Middlebury College and a doctorate in religion from Temple University. He has taught in a variety of positions at Temple University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to graduate school, he worked for 10 years in international relations and conflict resolution in Washington, D.C., Jerusalem, Berlin, and Philadelphia. He is the recipient of a number of academic awards and grants from the American Friends Service Committee, the Roothbert Fellowship, and the John Templeton Foundation. In 2007–2008, he served as a Senior Fulbright Fellow in the department of Buddhist studies at the University of Peradeniya in Kandy, Sri Lanka. He is the author of The New Sciences of Religion: Exploring Spirituality from the Outside In and Bottom Up (Palgrave Macmillian, 2010) and a collection of essays, Politics by Other Means: Science and Religion in the 21st Century (Metanexus, 2010). He has also edited two volumes: Advanced Methodologies in the Scientific Study of Religion and Spirituality (Metanexus, 2010) and H+/-Transhumanism and Its Critics (Metanexus, 2010) with Gregory Hansell. For more information, go to www.grassie.net.
