Stephen C. Meyer of Seattle’s Discovery Institute showed up during my freshman year at SPU to give a careful and, dare I say it, elegant, critique of current theories in evolution. He concluded that any gaps in the theory of evolution proved that God exists (the Judeo-Christian god, to be specific). This is a little like saying that since I didn’t see how our office walls were just painted, it was clearly a magical elf who came in over the weekend. On the flip side, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) argues that if you can’t empirically prove the existence of God, there’s no such thing. Enter Chris Hedges with I Don’t Believe in Atheists (Free Press, $25), in which he describes the more vocal proponents of strict atheism as “little more than secular fundamentalists.” Think science, politics, and God need to return to their separate corners? Find your home in the anti-extremist pages of Hedges’ work. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, www.townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. LAURA ONSTOT

Wed., March 26, 7:30 p.m., 2008