A theologian widely respected for his teaching and writing in the area of science and religion, John F. Haught is the Thomas Healey Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University, where he has taught for the past thirty-seven years. In a 1999 study, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, he argued that while a purposeful universe would have to possess at least a loosely directional aim, purpose is “a much wider notion than design.” Dr. Haught claims the debate between evolutionists and creationists is fundamentally misdirected because both these competing ideologies lack an adequate discussion of novelty, which he sees as a necessary component of evolution and a central theme in theological understanding of divine creativity. In his view, Darwin’s vision of life, instead of being hostile to religion—as scientific skeptics and many believers have thought it to be—actually provides a fertile setting for mature reflection on ideas about God and cosmic meaning. Dr. Haught extends his discussion of evolutionary theism in Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution (2003 and 2005). In the unfinished nature of the universe and its evolution into a “stupendous array of beauty,” he finds support for his belief that the cosmos has some overall point and human beings a basis for hope. A graduate of St. Mary’s University in Baltimore, Dr. Haught earned his Ph.D. in theology at The Catholic University of America in 1970. He formerly served as chair of the Georgetown theology department. A recipient of the Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion given by Seton Hall University and of the Sophia Award of the Washington Theological Union, Dr. Haught is a member of the board of advisors of the John Templeton Foundation. He has published more than fifty articles and essays in collected volumes and is the editor of Science and Religion in Quest of Cosmic Purpose (2000). He is the author of fourteen books, including The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (1993) and Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conservation (1995), which has been translated into Romanian, Korean, Persian, and Chinese. The most recent in the scientifically informed alternatives he has offered to Darwinian naturalism,
Is Nature Enough? Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science, was published earlier this year by Cambridge University Press.