By Jasmine Michaelson

Many scientists believe that God is the meaning of life, not in any way the actual driving force behind it.

But according to Dr. Holmes Rolston III, who spoke to students and professors at USU Friday afternoon, they are wrong.

"Things decay and die," the unassuming, thin, gray-haired man in a dark suit said from behind his lectern, "but there seems to be a sort of pro-life force at work here."

A force, he adds that science can't quite explain

Rolston, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State, has earned the 2003 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his work concerning "genes, genesis and God." He will accept the award in May at Buckingham Palace.

His hour-long lecture wasn't enough to scratch the surface of such a complex and delicate topic, but Rolston was able to present a major argument.

Humans with complex languages happened as a result of societies, he explained, which were a result of the evolution of multicellular life which was a result of meiotic sex which came after eukaryotes.

"Do eukaryotes imply persons?" he asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one from the audience.

He gave examples of inexplicable ways in which life has evolved such as prokaryotes evolving out of eukaryotes, aerobic life out of anaerobic life and endoskeletons out of exoskeletons, all of which were "not logical consequences of anything."

"Information was just floating in from nowhere," he said -- "information" meaning genes, which he defined as "packages of information."

"Could this (appearance of information) be divine inspiration?" Again, no one responded.

"God could be slipping information into the world," he said as he projected an image of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel God with his outstretched finger gently touching a giant strand of DNA, producing a good-natured chuckle from the crowd.

"Sometimes artists can say what we can't quite put into words," he said with a smile.

"What I'm saying is all on the basis of information," he said. "It may come from above or below or from East or West.We need something that can increase information in the world."

The fact being, he added, that life continuously gets more and more promising.

Perhaps, he proposed, God is letting life do its own thing here and acting as coach, catalyst, and educator as it evolves.

"The biologists can't deny that," he said.

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