Thank you very much.

First of all, I would like to thank the Thomistic Institute for inviting me here,

and I would like to thank all of you for coming.

And the purpose of my lecture is sharing with you some thoughts that I have on evolution

in terms of speaking as somebody who is familiar and likes the philosophy and theology from the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition.

And the point of departure for us tonight is simple thesis or position of theistic evolution,

oftentimes called theistic evolutionism,

which basically is a view that the belief in creation

is compatible with the modern scientific understanding

of cosmological, geological, chemical,

biochemical and biological evolution.

And we obviously find various possible formulations of this view.

For instance, we may find Francis Collins, a convert to Christianity,

American physician and geneticist, who says simply that evolution is real,

but it was set in motion by God.

Another statement that we can bring as an example,

evolution occurred as biologists describe it,

but under the direction of God.

But then we find people like Dennis Lamouré,

who suggests that the word arrangement in the term

theistic evolution is rather unfortunate. Why? Because it places the process of evolution

as the primary term, a noun, and makes the creator creation secondary as merely a qualifying adjective. So he prefers to speak about evolutionary

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