Quest for human origins

From the early 1960s until present I have been an avid follower of the science of human evolution. The problem I was trying to solve was, did human-ness arise suddenly by a direct intervention of God, or did it evolve gradually and incrementally as Darwin suggested? I have visited hominid fossil sites at Sterkfontein, Makapan and the Lake Turkana region in northern Kenya, and discussed this problem with many experts in human paleoanthropology, including Dr Meave Leakey and Alun Hughes. The photo shows me with Meave Leakey in Nairobi in 1995.

My search is on-going, but I am leaning very much towards gradualism and a non-interventionist approach to divine action in the universe.

I have shared my passion for human evolution with generations of my high school students, travelling far and wide across South Africa to immerse them in this exciting research and open up their minds to the philosophical and spiritual implcations it is generating. As Richard Leakey said, the gap between human and non-human is smaller than we like to think. We are all connected.