The speakers, E. M. Carreira, Elisa Buforn, (distinguished collaborator of Prof. A.Udías, UCM), Nicolás Jouve, José F.Guijarro and Julio A. Gonzalo, focused on the general subject from different angles but with a common aim: to show that cosmic evolution (as given by contemporary science) not only does not exclude the action of a Creator but, rather, it requires his creative intervention, more evident in certain moments or époques of cosmic history. In the final Round Table, chaired by Rafael Rubio de Urquía, the speakers responded to questions from the floor.
Some precursors of the materialistic atheism, so much in vogue today (Wiener for example), were completely wrong when they thought that the main reasons why a good number of Christians found Darwin’s theories repulsive was that they did not like the idea that a gorilla was their antecessor. What preoccupied them more was, rather, that there were no clear distinctions within Darwin’s perspective. Chesterton, in particular, noted that that gray coloration permeating Darwin’s work meant the negation of all meaning and all purpose to existence, i.e. to everything which is most valuable in human life. A sensible observer can easily see around him the work of an intelligent Creator in the cosmos, even if contemporary science as such remains content with herself merely illustrating the marvels of Creation, without necessarily extracting the final conclusion.
This conclusion, strictly speaking, falls outside its realm.
In the flyer announcing the Symposium, the following questions were raised:
All these questions require concrete responses.
Julio A. Gonzalo is Professor of Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and is the author of several books on Condensed Matter and on Cosmology, the latest being Inflationary Cosmology Revisited. In 2003, he was awarded the Medal of "Alfonso X El Sabio" by the Government of Spain.