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A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin College. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: July 10 All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Dana Schmitz, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, campus correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Nick Young, photographer and layout.
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Distinguished Lecture Series ends on high note
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| Dr. John F. Haught |
The final speaker for the 2006-2007 Distinguished Speaker Series on Religion, Science and Law left close to 400 Collin students, professors and community members contemplating a new-found commonality between Darwinism and religion.
Georgetown University Research Professor of Theology, Dr. John F. Haught, presented "Evolution and Faith: What is at Stake?" to the Collin College community in packed evening and daytime sessions. Dr. Haught has written more than a dozen books and is the recipient of the Owen Garrigan Award in science and religion and Sophia award for theological excellence.
Dr. Haught explained the merging of the seemingly disparate ideas of science and religion in layers. He uses the analogy of a pot of water boiling on a stove to illustrate his point.
“At one level it is boiling because the water molecules are excited, turning the liquid into a gaseous state, but that doesn’t rule out the fact that it is boiling because I turned the gas on and because I want tea. Within this example, there are three different examples. We don’t choose one over the other, but that is what is happening in the Darwinian war,” Dr. Haught said.
Dr. Haught says that scientists frequently try to view religion exclusively through their particular career fields. He proposes the possibility of a plurality of science and religion because he states that, after all, science itself is pluralistic.
“Great theologians have said the purpose of religion is to invite us into mystery, and dogmas are points of departure. Religions move very, very slowly relative to science. The word evolution for many Christians and Muslims stands for all the evils of modernity. They have made evolution the chief cause of crumbling family values and school violence,” Dr. Haught said.
He realized that part of the issue for people today is that they find it challenging to imagine a creator God if the universe itself is creative.
“It is not so much that God makes things, but that God makes things that can make things themselves. God doesn’t come down and stitch amino acids together. The idea that creation was not spontaneously created does not appeal to us now. We perceive matter as an inert substance that can be manipulated by God. Matter is energy, and that is really one way of thinking the same thing,” Dr. Haught said.
Researching science and religion is an ongoing quest for Dr. Haught, and he is in frequent contact with other theologians around the world. He says the crux of the issue for many people is how to reconcile the impersonality of evolution and natural selection with divine providence. From atoms to a tough love God There are many schools of thought on the topic of evolution and religion. Dr. Haught addresses several current ideas on the topic. In atomism everything is reversible to discrete atomic units, and separatists believe that individuals have no relation to the human community. Dr. Haught adds that murder seems more acceptable if people are viewed as objects in the way. Naturalists withdraw from the heavens to focus exclusively on earth and this world. Materialists believe that everything is matter, and there is no proof of the divine.
Dr. Haught mentions deceased Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould who said, “Humans are a fortuitous afterthought.” According to Phillip Johnson, you need intelligent design theory to explain Darwinism. Dr. Haught refers to this as the “blind faith” approach; Darwin’s theory is correct but humans cannot fathom the whole picture. Science and religion are kept separate, and Dr. Haught points out that intelligent design does not permit the possibility that faith could drive people to explore science.
Proponents of the divine pedagogy approach, like Guy Murchie, preach life as a school of hard knocks that is good for the soul. Dr. Haught notes that this theory does not explain why there is so much suffering in the world. Beauty and the scientific believer Geologist and paleontologist Teilhard and A.N. Whitehead, a philosopher and mathematician, are the reasons Dr. Haught became interested in science and religion 35 years ago. The cosmic approach is exemplified in the works of Whitehead, a professor who taught at Oxford and Harvard. Whitehead concluded that the universe’s goal is to bring about beauty.
“Beauty is fragile and perishable and walks the razor’s edge between novelty and order. He wanted to know why there was a cosmic restlessness, a world in process. He saw God as a source of novelty and a disturber of the status quo. Providence was persuasion as love and did not compel with force. Whitehead and his followers were process theologians and believed that God offers possibilities. The cosmic approach allows for chance and freedom and is open to Darwinian evolution. There is room for tragedy, and divine providence and wisdom maximizes beauty. Our lives have meaning because we contribute toward beauty in whatever way we can. This is also a nice framework for ecological responsibilities,” Dr. Haught said.
Instead of stopping with the cosmos theory, Dr. Haught adds the biblical approach to the mix. Beauty is backed with a providential promise of God’s word.
“Promise is something that opens us up to the future. God is restless to have a universe that becomes more and expresses that through promise. Darwin’s ideas of accidents, laws of nature and time, indicative of divine patience, are the ingredients of a magnificent story. I personally look on Darwinism as a gift,” Dr. Haught said.
To view Dr. Haught’s complete speech, contact Regina Hughes, Director of Center for Scholarly and Civic Engagement at rhughes@ccccd.edu.
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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