Product Description

In God After Darwin, John Haught argues that the ongoing debate between Darwinian evolutionists and Christian apologists is fundamentally misdirected: Both sides persist in focusing on an explanation of underlying design and order in the universe. Haught suggests that what is lacking in both of these competing ideologies is the notion of novelty, a necessary component of evolution and the essence of the unfolding of divine mystery. He argues that Darwin's disturbing picture of life, instead of being hostile to religion--as scientific skeptics and many believers have thought it to be--actually provides a most fertile setting for mature reflection on the idea of God. Solidly grounded in scholarship, Haught's explanation of the relationship between theology and evolution is both accessible and engaging.

The second edition of God After Darwin assesses Haught's experience as an expert witness in the landmark case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District on teaching evolution and intelligent design in schools.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90831 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"Highly provocative and much more comprehensible and enjoyable reading than anything produced by either Teilhard de Chardin or Whitehead...Highly recommended for philosophers, biologists, theologians, college students, and general readers interested in the interface between metaphysics, science and theology." Choice; "As an evolutionary biologist I cannot fail to be excited about Haught's writing." Church Times

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Just buy it!
Haught's work here is simply unprecedented. Unlike many other books of a similar genre, Haught doesn't merely attempt to "squeeze" God into a Darwinist world view of reality, neither does he end up portraying God as a helpless first cause Deity. Rather, Haught turns materialism on its head, exposes its limitations and prejudices and clearly portrays God as the dynamic Ground of all Being and as the loving power with a VISION rather than a plan for this evolving Universe.

Haught shows clearly that cosmic and biological evolution deeply enriches theological conviction, and he reveals a robust and intelligent belief in God. The author extensively faces numerous arguments from 'steadfast' materialists like Dawkins and Dennet, (he makes numerous references to Dennet's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" and Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker'). Haught effortlessly chews them up, spits them out and reveals an exiting open view of God's creative involvement in the processes of reality and its ecological significance.

His chapter on cosmic 'hierarchical information' was particularly insightful - with specific reference to the genetic code of DNA, cosmic self-awareness and the laws of nature. Not only do these phenomena show that the materialist world view is paradoxical and severely limited, but it also reveals the rationale and logic behind religious convictions that the true foundation of all being is the Divine Mind - (the Universal Consciousness, the Ground of all Being - GOD).

Haught has a delectably open outlook on reality and he refrains from making any kind of 'clinical' conclusions like Michael Behe's "irreducible systems". Haught says such clinical attempts at 'proving design' are "apologetically ineffective and theologically inconsequential." He says that the Behe-style design argument is an "attempt on the part of finite humans to grasp the infinite and incomprehensible God in rational or scientific terms. These arguments diminish the mystery of God, seeking to bring it under the control of the limited human mind. For religious reasons, therefore, we should be grateful to Darwinians for helping us get rid of the pretentiousness of natural theology."

He stresses the importance of including the essential elements of the larger cosmic story rather than looking "too closely and minutely at living organisms and their delicate adaptivity as the primary evidence of a designing deity." He stresses that prejudice can also be attributed to the other extremists - namely, Dennet and Dawkins.

Haught gives plausible insights into the existence of suffering and dead-ends in evolution as he talks about how God is viewed from the Christian perspective as a "self limiting God". He writes: "That God would allow the world to 'become itself' renders plausible evolution's winding through an endless field of potentialities", and then makes the significant point that "an infinite Love will not manipulate or dissolve the beloved - in this case, the cosmos." He references the Sante Fe Institute's observations of Nature's tendency to organize itself "spontaneously", (also see my review for Stuart Kauffman's 'At Home in the Universe').

With regard to this element of 'suffering', it's worth pointing out that God's omnipotence is understood from the Christian perspective as God's capacity to enter into love with all its costs. Indeed, belief in the divine "self- emptying" is basic to the Christian faith.

Overall, this book is chock-full with illuminating insights and stimulating facts, and I keep coming back to it, reading it again, and letting the ideas ferment in my mind. It's truly wonderful - buy it!

Evolution is Basic Christian Theology
This is a wondrous work, wherein Haught truly presents a theology of evolution. He doesn't show that evolution is consistent with the Bible- rather that the kind of God we read of in the Bible would *have* to create with evolution. And that modern materialistic philosophy can in no way answer for evolution- in fact, alone, Christianity is the belief system that most fits with evolutionary biology.

Haught uses a wealth of authors, some more well known than others, both biologists and theologians. He redeems process theology and shows how it fits with the Bible. He grapples with the best of Gould and presents a way that the magisterium of religion and science *should* mix, while still having their boundaries.

Every year I present evolution in my biology class, to students from Christian and Muslim backgrounds, and receive acrimony from administration, parents, and students alike. To try to assuage the hostility, I teach a day of philosophical approaches to evolution, to indicate that there are many ways to approach this controversial topic, and the students need to talk with their parents about what the best way is for them personally. This book is causing me to rewrite my class presentation of the philosophy of evolution. No longer will I break it up into Theistic, Deistic, and Atheistic approaches. Haught makes a very convincing case for three approaches of Opposition, Separatism, and Engagement. Ironically, the materialistic atheists and the literal creationists are both in the same camp of opposition. Separatism is the belief that both science and religion teach different sides of the same coin- something I have found myself on in the past. But I have long wanted to move more towards Engagement- looking at how evolution would influence the idea of God. After all, if God made the world this way, as all science indicates, then that should tell us something about God- as Romans 1.20 indicates.

Haught provides a way for us to understand God through evolution- but specifically Jesus Christ in God. It is the theology of kenosis, central to the Christian belief, that is most fully formed in evolution (outside the Incarnation); it is this theology which best philosophically explains evolution. It is a God who loves enough to step back and allow for that which He loves the freedom to come to Him, in true Love, that causes evolution. It is a God who opens the doors to possibilities. This is a God who pours Himself out, who took the form of a servant, who became a human and part of His creation, who died, who is willing to be humble, who is willing to love and to risk losing the ones He loves, who is willing to love and have people turn against Him. What kind of world would this kind of God create? Haught argues a world with suffering, with change, always in the process of creation, and therefore not yet perfect, a world that can be changed, is changing, and the creation participating in the creation of itself. It is a God of the Future, and not the present only, or the past only. A God, as witnessed throughout the Bible, of Hope, expecting new things. Behold, He makes all things new.

This isn't Deism, for God is very involved, and emotionally moved by what is happening, and participating in the suffering of His creation. Nor is this trying to step into science. There is no reason, from a scientific perspective, why evolution has to posit the existence of a God, or His nonexistence. But the moment we ask, "Why would such a world have been allowed to evolve?"- when we ask the why questions, then we move into theology. And neither materialistic evolution nor traditional "Intelligent Design" theory answer this question adequately- they both ignore the question in much the same way. ID Theory looks only at the great complexity of certain problems, without answering the awkward byzantine questions of awfulness in creation. The problem of evil in nature is nothing new- evolution just brings it out much more clearly. Haught argues the answer is in understanding the character of a God who suffers with his creation, and is willing to see his creation suffer in order to change into something greater, without dictating the creation be as He sees it should be, as if it were merely an extension of him rather than something separate.

Where is God then in the evolutionary process? Haught suggests within information, at all levels- something not defined by science, and not explained by evolutionary theory. And so God loves all his creation. I loved the novel idea that God loves the atoms of the rocks as well as us. Yes, I think He loves me more, but all of his creation are his sons and daughters, for He made it. All is in the process of forming. And perhaps, he loves those atoms of rocks because one day they will be (or have been) part of a creation that is more capable of recognizing his wonder and brilliance. All creation worships Him, the Psalmist says. A rock is best at it's worship when it is fully rockish. Which isn't hard for a rock. But we worship all the more, for we do it fully willingly, and knowingly. Or we can. And so are loved all the more for it.

But the presence of God is where the book begins to break down. It is in the end a bit too Deistic for me, still. While I don't think Haught argues in any way for Deism, I don't think he fully answers the presence of God. There seems to be little place for the miraculous in his explanations. If this is a God of Kenosis, as seen in the Incarnation, than He is and always was a God of Kenosis, pouring Himself out in suffering for His creation. But also if He was a God of the miraculous in the Incarnation, than He always was a God of the miraculous.

In the end, Haught remains too far on the side of Arminianism for me. Yes, God allows His creation to proceed of it's own will- but at the same time, His will is constantly working to shape all things. In the doctrine of Augustinian predestination, this in no way denies the free realm of chance, for the two happen simultaneously. This is supported by Haught's argument that God is beyond time and ahead in Time. Haught's position is that God is present throughout in feeling, but not as actively working as I would like. He is hoping in the future. But what is He hoping in? Were He to hope in anything but Himself, then He Himself would commit idolatry, God forbid. But then He can not hope in chance, or in the creation that He Himself made through the process of natural selection- rather, He must hope in his continual actions in that same creation.

Additionally, Haught is kind of confusing towards the end, where he goes off on some tangents on the presence of the subjective, and other authors' thoughts on it, without ever defining what the subjective is. And the idea of how original sin entered the world is not well answered. Naturally, Haught posits, like C.S. Lewis, that the two Genesis stories are myth. But he then puts the idea of a perfect world, central to the Truth of the myth, as something that never existed, except in the realm of the Perfect Ideal. Edwards does a better job of answering this issue in The God of Evolution.

Much of the second half of the book is epistemology, which I ironically find very hard to understand, above all the forms of philosophy. That made for slow reading- but that's my fault.

I think the greatest aspect of this book is Hope. Not merely hope that we can reconcile evolution and Christianity. That's there- but that's only a slim part of it. It is the idea of possibility, the presentness of something pregnant. Not a wish for the Real- but real Hope, that there will be something coming that is greater than what we have now. This is God's great desire for us. This is the witness of the entire Old and New Testaments. We are going someplace greater on this plan for the future. What it will be, we don't know. It is the excitement of the Future that we gain from the God of the Future, He who is the Future, pulling us into a new realm. He began this eons ago, and continues now, and will present something New, in creatio originalis, creatio continua, and creatio nova.

Very profound, thoughtful, challenging; slightly flawed
Thanks to other reviews on amazon.com, I came across the author's works, and I am very glad I did. His books are very deep, profound, and thought-provoking. Haught is a propoent of the "engagement" of science and religion, as opposed to the separatist position of writers such as Phillip Johnson ("Darwin On Trial"). He is the only theologian I've come across who faces the challenges posed by Darwinian evolution absolutely squarely, refusing to try to defend what he feels is the antiquated theological notion of God as an intelligent designer of an orderly and purposeful universe. Indeed, evolution by natural selection, as well as the laws of physics, do show us a very chaotic, entropic, often destructive, cruel world.

In addition to the difficult task of defining God in terms of evolution, Haught also attempts to refute the strict materialistic scientism of Dennett and Dawkins. Of course, it is very unlikely that his arguments would sway an atheist in the least, which is to be expected. "God After Darwin" is thus clearly for those who want to find purpose and faith in their lives and in God in a world so profoundly influenced, for good and for bad, by Darwin.

I feel that Haught succeeds admirably in these very difficult tasks. I can only imagine his struggle to admit the truth of evolution and how to define a valid theology in concordance with it, instead of denying it. While reading this book the careful reader will sense the author's struggle, and if you agree with him, his victory!

Haught defines these concepts to find purpose in an evolutionary world: a) kenosis - Divine emptying; God does not control Its creation, allowing creation to come to It; b) information, which coordinates parts into wholes, and the emergence of increasing beauty (he uses Whitehead's writing to define beauty), through novelty, complexity, and the contrasts of opposites; c) a definition of time a la Teilhard de Chardin's Omega point, where the future, a theology of hope, is the "ultimate" purpose of evolution. Haught refers to the future as the key to finding purpose in evolution many times, perhaps too many. He makes a fine definition of community as groups of people, of widely differing cultures and belief systems, working together to manifest God's Plan, the increase of beauty.

Haught refutes scientific materialism by pointing to evolution's clear depiction of increasing complexity in living forms, which he feels points to the necessity that beings as conscious and evolved as we are would "evolve" - I use quotes because I don't think that humans evolved from apes w/o an intervention of some "God." He also cites recent discoveries in astrophysics to underscore the fact that the emergence of sentient life, really human life, was indeed no accident.

Haught also refutes the dualism that is inherent in many religions, which depicts maeterial existence as an accident, where the goal is to see our lives as meaningful only in escaping the physical, returning to the timeless spiritual realms beyond the grave. Again, the argument is that we must live in the here and now, and work towards the "glorious" future I discussed above.

I did have problems with several areas in the book, however. First, I feel that one has to find a balance as a spiritual being having a physical experience. I have always found the expression, "be in the world but not of it" to be a good way to live, because it reminds me that physical life is indeed a "soul school," too temporary for one to be so concerned about a "limitless" future, which the author seems to use as a crutch to explain away the awful suffering in the world, including wars and murders on a scale that even God must have difficulty comprehending (!), inhabited by a schizophrenic species which seems to multiply w/o restraint, and so on. I also found Chapter 10, where the author goes on for pages and pages trying to come up with a logical reason for what kind of "subjective consciousness" existed in the universe before sentient beings (esp. humans) came along, to be superfluous. And that is surprising, because elsewhere he appropriately and humbly does "let go, and let God," in acknowledging the mysteries of the universe. Finally, I do believe that the "true" evolution is a Divine Plan of spiritual evolution, especially as concerns humans; ironically, I found no mention of this in the book. The author seems to have rejected such metaphysics, as have most scientists today.