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Item Open Access Celebrating 50 years of the Templeton Prize 2023(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Templeton Gill, Heather, narrator; Unidentified speaker; Denholm, Rebecca, editor and producer; CTN Communications, London, producerCelebrating 50 years of the Templeton Prize, two dozen past prize laureates, living and deceased, are featured for their cosmic focus, whether theistic or atheistic, on the grand visions which Homo sapiens, the wise species, can attain. What do, what ought we humans most care for and about? Brief, penetrating, pointed, provocative, and pithy moments of wisdom. About halfway through Holmes Rolston is heard: "The environmental crisis is essentially - a crisis of spirit."Item Open Access Detail - Rolston walking in aspen(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1988) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Bend, Ron, speaker and filmmakerRolston walking in the aspen in Colorado mountains notices the great detail there, such as the mosses, the lichens, the insects, biological diversity and wealth. These may be important in ecosystems, but the rare ones often are not, still they contribute to the richness of life on Earth. We ought to care for, to celebrate their conservation.Item Open Access Willa Swenson-Lengyel in Zoom interview with Holmes Rolston(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023-02-10) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Swenson-Lengyel, Willa, speaker; Wills, Anne, speaker; Davidson, Katie, speakerDiscussion between Professor Willa Swenson-Lengyel and Holmes Rolston, III on February 10, 2023 via Zoom, includes a discussion with Anne Wills, Chair of Religious Studies at Davidson College. Rolston presents a series of two dozen slides that describe how he moved from being an undergraduate in physics and math at Davidson College in the 1950's through a career in science and religion for which he was in 2003 awarded the Templeton Prize in Buckingham Palace by Prince Philip and Jack Templeton. He immediately donated the prize, worth about $1.5 million, to Davidson College to establish an endowed chair in science and religion. Rolston engages in conversation with Willa Swenson-Lengyel, who in 2022 became the second person named to the chair, about why she took the position and what she expects to accomplish in it. Discussion of liberal arts and teaching the promising Davidson students how to think creatively in multiple disciplines. Discussion with Anne Wills who recalls how Willa Swenson-Lengyel was the selection committee's top choice. Discussion of similarities and differences between Rolston's career at Colorado State University, where he became a University Distinguished Professor, for his research and teaching relating science and religion, notably in environmental ethics and sustainability and Willa Swenson-Lengyel's anticipated career at Davidson College.Item Open Access Challenges in environmental ethics: Richard J. Burke Lecture(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2006-03-14) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Burke, Richard J., speaker; Oakland University Media, videographerChallenges in environmental ethics, philosophically and practically, include hunting, Colorado hunters and bear hunters, saving whales in Alaska, saving a drowning bison in Yellowstone, mercy-killing an elephant calf, tree spiking, shooting goats on San Clemente Island, cutting old growth forests, Yellowstone fires, and saving ecosystems and the biosphere planet Earth. Interaction with students and the audience.Item Open Access Creation: order and chance in physics and biology(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1990-04-19) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Dean, Charles, speaker; Crombie, Bob, speakerThe relations between physics and theology are surprisingly cordial at present; the relations between biology and theology are more difficult. A key to understanding the interrelations of all three: physics, biology, and religion lies in examining the concept of order and disorder. Astrophysics and nuclear physics are describing a universe "fine-tuned" for life, although physics has also found a universe with indeterminacy in it. Meanwhile evolutionary biology and molecular biology seem to be discovering that the history of life is a random walk with much struggle and chance, driven by selfish genes, although they have also found that in this random walk order is built up over the millennia across a negentropic upslope, attaining in Earth's natural history the most complex and highly ordered phenomena known in the universe, such as ecosystems, organisms, and, most of all, the human mind. Holmes Rolston lecture "Creation: Order and Chance in Physics and Biology" was the 15th Henry Harrell Memorial Lecture in Religion presented at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee on April 19, 1990.Item Open Access Biological conservation of microbes(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1989-09-11) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speakerA talk by Holmes Rolston, III in the CSU Department of Microbiology on September 11, 1989. Environmental ethics is typically concerned with big stuff, bears, wolves, plants, wildfires, or insects. The Endangered Species act protects these, but does not mention microbes. There are concerns about microbes, in diseases, such as polio, or for patents, or fermenting. There are agricultural, industrial, medical uses. The usual list of reasons for preserving species are that they have aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, or scientific value. Microbes can have ecological, historical, and scientific value. Often we do not know how much, at least not yet. Microbes in rare places, such as in the hot springs of Yellowstone, may bring clues about the origin of life. Respect for life includes microbes. For perhaps two-thirds of the history of Earth, all life was one-celled.Item Open Access Genes, genesis and God: Holmes Rolston III: Richard J. Burke lecture in philosophy, religion and society(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2006-03-13) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Burke, Richard J., speakerHolmes Rolston delivers the inaugurating Richard J. Burke Lecture in Philosophy, Religion and Society at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan on March 13, 2006. Professor Rolston discusses the debate about order and disorder, randomness and probability, actualities and possibilities, as these result in increasing diversity and complexity over the evolutionary epic. He features the increasing information in genes that appears in natural history, resulting in genetic coding, eucaryotes, sexuality, societies, and mind, with human capacities for culture, including science, religion and ethics. Life opens up increasingly new possibility space. In both nature and culture, life gets more promise, becomes more promising. Life is self-transforming, takes on meaning. This invites and demands deeper explanations, philosophically and theologically.Item Open Access The Good Samaritan and his genes - audio/video lecture(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2002-11-09) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speakerThis is a lecture given by Holmes Rolston at a conference on Biology and Morality at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan on November 9, 2002.Item Open Access From Shenandoah to the mountain west(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021-10-22) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speakerHolmes Rolston recalls his life story founding environmental ethics. He was born in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, with mountains on his skyline and fields, creeks, and rivers as his playground. His elders loved gospel and landscape, gifts of God. Moving to a city, he excelled in school, and studied physics and mathematics, theology, and philosophy of science. He got lost in the stars, loved natural history, and rejoiced in abundant life persisting in the midst of its perpetual perishing. He discovered natural values in his storied residence in the Appalachians. He became the father of environmental ethics at Colorado State University. Earth is a promised land, a wonderland planet, in which one can glimpse divinity.Item Open Access Ecological aesthetics and ethics in the post epidemic era(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021-08) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Bend, Ron, videographerThe largest and most threatening pandemic in human history has humbled arrogant humans, locked us up. The virus in a couple months has stymied human achievements, aspirations, and freedoms. The upsetting surprise is that this tiny bit of nothing, not even alive, that you can't see even with a microscope, is upsetting our local and our global ecologies. We wonder why and how viruses can have their place in a wonderland biosphere. One big worry is that, developing a vaccine, we will miss this opportunity for more caring, love, and solidarity in our human communities, for pandemic justice. Biological nature is always giving birth, always in travail. Death is a necessary counterpart to the advancing of life. The music of life is in a minor key. The global Earth is a land of promise, and yet one that has to be died for. Earthen natural history might be called the evolution of suffering, or, equally, the evolution of caring. Life is perpetually perishing, yet perpetually regenerated, redeemed. In the post pandemic normal, it is impossible to go back to where we were. We must embrace nature and culture on Earth as it is and as it is becoming.Item Open Access Wonderland Earth in the Anthropocene Epoch (Yale University)(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020-10-23) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Tucker, Mary Evelyn, speaker; Murray, Tom, moderator; Center for Environmental Communication, Yale University, videographer"Wonderland Earth in the Anthropocene Epoch," Rolston Zoom lecture and discussion sponsored by Yale University Center for Environmental Communication, October 23, 2020. Moderated by Tom Murray, Speaker Coordinator. Rolston introduced by Mary Evelyn Tucker, Co-Director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, also sponsoring the seminar. Earth as the wonderland planet, humans as a wonder on Earth, Anthropocene humans, managed planet and end of nature. Anthopocene arrogance. Wonderful humans incarnate on wonderland Earth.Item Open Access Is God responsible for evil?(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Zimmerman, Dean W., speaker; Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Couenhoven, Jesse, speaker; Bishop, John, speaker; Ward, Keith, speaker; Kuhn, Robert Lawrence, speaker; The Kuhn Foundation; Getzels Gordon Productions, producerHow on earth could God be reconciled with massive, monstrous evil? If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and if God is the creator, wouldn't God be responsible for evil? Re-visiting the issue, featuring interviews by Robert Kuhn on Closer to Truth with: • Dean W. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University • Holmes Rolston III, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University. The Rolston interview is also separately online: https://hdl.handle.net/10217/211041 • Jesse Couenhoven, Professor of Moral Theology in the Department of Humanities and Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University • John Bishop, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand • Keith Ward. Gresham Professor of Divinity at Gresham College, London, from 1991 through 2003 Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford.Item Open Access If God exists, why natural evil?(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, interviewee; Kuhn, Robert Lawrence, interviewer; The Kuhn Foundation; Getzels Gordon Productions, producerHolmes Rolston interviewed by Robert Kuhn on Closer to Truth. Filmed at Helsingor, Denmark, 2011. If God exists, why is there so much suffering in the natural world? Because creativity is impossible without challenge that includes forms of suffering. You cannot achieve the rich genesis in evolutionary natural history without such challenge. Eyes, ears, teeth, legs, muscles evolve to search for food, to seek prey and to avoid predators. The struggle for adapted fit is struggling through to something higher. Biblical faith similarly finds creative suffering. The name Israel means "he who struggles with God," and God struggles to redeem Israel. Jesus lives in creative struggle to become God incarnate, and dies to redeem from sin. The creation is cruciform in that it necessarily requires life and death struggle. Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. The way of nature is the way of the cross.Item Open Access In the name of beauty(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Brady, Emily, speaker; Pascale Smeesters and Bau Dang, producerThere is beauty in nature. Is anything there ugly? Those who claim a "positive aesthetics" find that, although there is local ugliness, in a more comprehensive view, such ugliness becomes beautiful also. The rotting carcass is soon recycled. Rolston finds that life persists in the midst of its perpetual perishing, and that is, over the centuries, a positive aesthetic. Brady prefers to recognize that death can be aesthetically ugly, and finds the bigger picture a scientific rather than an aesthetic account.Item Open Access Rolston viewing a Pasqueflower(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Colorado State University, producerHolmes Rolston, hiking in spring woods, discovers a Pasqueflower, one of the earliest blooming wildflowers, about Easter. "We walk too hurriedly if ever we pass the season's first Pasqueflower by, too busy to let its meeting stay us for a quiet moment before this token of the covenant of life to continue in beauty despite the storm." "Life decomposes and out of its throes it recomposes. It persists in beauty despite its perpetual perishing. Light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it." "Let winters come; life will flower on as long as Earth shall last."Item Open Access Leading and misleading metaphors: from organism to Anthropocene(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018-05-03) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Colorado State University, producerHolmes Rolston presents appreciative and critical remarks at a symposium, After the Death of Nature, held at the University of California, Berkeley, on May 2-3, 2018, celebrating the life and work of Carolyn Merchant, an ecofeminist philosopher. Rolston's remarks, under the theme: "Leading and Misleading Metaphors: From Organism to Anthropocene," recognize her insights into how the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment featured the control of nature, bringing "the death of nature." A once nurturing mother earth, became inert and mechanical, manipulated by industry and agriculture. Strident recent environmentalists have been celebrating our entering the Anthropocene Epoch, boldly embracing perpetual enlargement of the bounds of the human empire. We are urged to become planetary managers, geo-engineers, rebuilding the Earth better to serve human needs. Rolston revisits Carolyn Merchant in the prospect of an Anthropocene Epoch. This symposium launches the publication of a Festschrift on Merchant, edited by Kenneth Worthy, Elizabeth Allison, and Whitney A. Bauman, After the Death of Nature, Routledge, 2019, in which Rolston's paper is included.Item Open Access Wonderland Earth in the Anthropocene Epoch (University of Mary Washington)(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018-04) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Mikhalevsky, Nina, speaker; Matzke, Jason, speaker; Colorado State University, producerThis lecture by Holmes Rolston III was the keynote lecture at a conference, Wild Places, Natural Spaces, the fourteenth annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place, at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia, on April 27-29, 2018. Rolston asks about (1) Earth as a wonderland planet, about (2) humans as the wonder of wonders on Earth. He continues (3) wondering about Anthropocene humans and their efforts to build a (4) managed planet bringing about the end of nature. He worries that this is (5) Anthropocene arrogance, and recommends, instead that these (6) wonderful humans should consider themselves incarnate on and caring for their wonderland Earth.Item Open Access Rolston bio-profile HD slideshow(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, filmmakerItem Open Access The Anthropocene! Beyond the natural? - UWSP(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017-04-28) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, producerWe are now entering the Anthropocene Epoch, so runs a recent enthusiastic claim. Humans can and ought go beyond the natural and powerfully engineer a better planet, managing for climate change, building new ecosystems for a more prosperous future. Perhaps the Anthropocene is inevitable. But: Rejoice? Accommodate? Accept it, alas? Perhaps the wiser, more ethical course is not so much beyond as keeping the natural in symbiosis with humans. Enter the Semi-Anthropocene! Basically Natural! Carefully!Item Open Access The Anthropocene! Beyond the natural? - OSU(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017-03-16) Rolston, Holmes, 1932-2025, speaker; Oregon State Universtiy, producerWe are now entering the Anthropocene Epoch, so runs a recent enthusiastic claim. Humans can and ought go beyond the natural and powerfully engineer a better planet, managing for climate change, building new ecosystems for a more prosperous future. Perhaps the Anthropocene is inevitable. But: Rejoice? Accommodate? Accept it, alas? Perhaps the wiser, more ethical course is not so much beyond as keeping the natural in symbiosis with humans. Enter the Semi-Anthropocene! Basically Natural! Carefully!