Lecture: John Haught – “Evolution and Faith: What is at Stake?”
Posted on October 20th, 2009 by Joe| Oct ’09 |
| 22 |
| 7:30 PM |
This lecture is sponsored by the IUB Department of Religious Studies. We are cancelling our normally scheduled movie night and encouraging everyone to attend this lecture in its stead. It will be at 7:30pm on Thursday (10/22) in Rawles 100.
Dr. John Haught, Distinguished Research Professor and Senior Fellow in Science and Religion at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, is an expert and frequent lecturer on Christian thought and evolution controversies such as intelligent design and creationism.
Professor Haught regards science and religion as two different and noncompeting levels of explanation for natural phenomena. He advocates a theistic form of evolution that avoids the twin pitfalls of excessive materialism or scientism that seeks to “disprove” religion, on the one hand, and religion that seeks to present itself as science, on the other (as with intelligent design). In his view, Darwin’s vision of life, instead of being hostile to religion, actually provides opportunity for mature reflection on ideas about God and cosmic meaning. He thus refers to Darwin’s theory as a “gift” to Christian theology. He also draws conclusions about ecological ethics—how humans should treat the natural world and nonhuman life—from his interpretation of theistic evolution.
John Haught has published numerous works dealing with religion and evolution, including Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution (2003), God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (2000), and Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution (2001). In 2005 Haught testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the famous Dover “intelligent design” trial, where he presented arguments that intelligent design is a form of religion, not science. Some of his more recent scholarship, such as God and the New Atheism (2008) presents a detailed rejoinder to the so-called neo-atheist criticisms of religion popularized by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. Haught maintains that these anti-religion arguments contain little that could be considered “new,” and that they display logical inconsistencies and crude caricatures of religious belief.
Professor Haught’s lecture “Evolution and Faith: What Is at Stake?” will address the supposed conflict between religious faith and scientific theory in a way that will appeal to a wide audience.
