Cosmogony & Anthropology

(Original Content Only)

(30-minute Powerpoint)

Students will prepare, organize, and present a 30-minute powerpoint (for a Christian audience) demonstrating the harmony between science and the Bible, the origins of the cosmos, the origin of life, and/or the origin of humanity. The purpose of this assignment is to help students practice incorporating credible science into a public presentation.

Your presentation should include the following elements:

• Content and presentation should be friendly toward unbelievers, even if it’s presented in a church context primarily to believers. In other words, the talk must illustrate the student’s use of concepts and principles learned during the class. The professor will grade the tone of the talk, including how well it exemplifies the principles of 1 Peter 3:15, including gentleness and respect toward others. Ask yourself: “If a non-believer were to watch the talk, would they say that I handled the scientific content fairly and accurately? Was my tone respectful toward non-believers?”
• If the presentation is done in a church context, it does not need to be part of a regular service, but may be in a specially scheduled event or a Sunday School class.
• Allow for an open question/answer time from the audience after your talk. This is a very important component of reaching evidence-oriented people.
• Note: The production value of your presentation doesn’t need to be as fancy as this. It will be graded primarily on tone and content.

The audio presentation will be uploaded to YouTube/Vimeo and a Powerpoint of the message (if used).

• The instructor will select 10 minutes (either the first 10 minutes, middle 10 minutes or last 10 minutes) of the video submission to evaluate, along with the Powerpoint presentation.

It is expected that each assignment will include:

• Lecture Material: Students will integrate significant background information learned from the lectures in class.
• Reading Material: Students will integrate significant information from the reading done for this class.
• Scholarly Research: Students will do additional scholarly research to add to the reading and lecture knowledge base that was established for this class from a variety of books, journals, and web-based resources.
• Originality: Students will add their own reflective and critical thought to each assignment in order to contextualize it for their specific life and/or ministry context. Be careful to cite sources and ideas that originate with other people.
• Format: Submit any written papers in standard Microsoft Word 2007 or above format with 1.00 margins, and according to Turabian format with appropriate front matter, body formatting, footnotes, works cited, and appendices.