John F. Haught is an American theologian. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University. He specializes in

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

systematic theology Systematic theology, or systematics, is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It addresses issues such as what the Bible teaches about certain topi ...

, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to

physical cosmology Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of f ...

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

, and

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

. He has authored numerous books and articles, including ''Science and Faith: A New Introduction'' (2012), ''Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and The Drama of Life'' ( 2010), ''God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens'' (2008), ''Christianity and Science: Toward a Theology of Nature'' (2007), ''Is Nature Enough? Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science'' (2006), ''Purpose, Evolution and the Meaning of Life'' (2004), ''God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution'' (2000, 2nd ed. 2007), ''Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation'' (1995), ''The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose'' (1993, 2nd ed. 2004), ''What is Religion?'' (1990), ''What is God?'' (1986), and ''The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose'' (1984). In 2002, Haught received th
Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion
in 2004 the Sophia Award for Theological Excellence, and in 2008 a �
Friend of Darwin Award
�� from th
National Center for Science Education
He also testified for the plaintiffs in Harrisburg, PA “Intelligent Design Trial”( Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Board of Education).

Life

John F. Haught was born on November 12, 1942 to Paul and Angela Haught. His wife is Evelyn.

Academic Career and Systemic Theology

Haught graduated from St. Mary's Seminary and University in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

in 1964 and subsequently received his PhD in theology from

The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private university, private Catholic church, Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution ...

in Washington DC in 1968 (Dissertation: ''Foundations of the Hermeneutics of Eschatology'').Templeton Foundation
Participant biography
. Accessed 8 Dec. 2006 From 1969 to 2005 Haught taught in the Department of Theology at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

in Washington D.C., serving as theology department chair between 1990 and 1995. In addition, he has been a Landegger Distinguished Professor and Thomas Healey Distinguished Professor, and held the D’Angelo Chair in Humanities at St. John’s University (2008), and was visiting professor at the

Pontifical Gregorian University The Pontifical Gregorian University ( it, Pontificia Università Gregoriana; also known as the Gregorian or Gregoriana,) is a higher education ecclesiastical school ( pontifical university) located in Rome, Italy. The Gregorian originated as ...

in Rome (2010).

Inspiration and influence

In his early 20s, John Haught started reading the works of the Jesuit priest and geologist

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( (); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and phil ...

. As an undergraduate student at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Haught had majored in philosophy and completed graduate work in philosophical theology, though he was never ordained. While teaching science and religion at Georgetown University and writing books on the topic, he specialized in the areas of cosmology and biology. During his studies, he concluded that Thomistic metaphysics could not adequately contextualize the discoveries of evolutionary biology and

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

physics. As the intellectual backbone of his courses, he turned to science-friendly 20th century philosophers such as

Alfred North Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...

Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Mihály; 11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism supplies ...

Bernard Lonergan Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan (17 December 1904 – 26 November 1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Lonergan's works include ''Insight: A ...

, and Hans Jonas. His books ''Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation'' (1995) and more recently ''Science and Faith: a New Introduction'' (2012) reflect an approach developed over many years of teaching at Georgetown University. During the 1990s, he became increasingly involved in issues relating to evolution, especially because of their growing importance in the intellectual world and the claims by creationists and prominent evolutionists alike that Darwinian science and belief in God are irreconcilable. The American cultural warfare over the teaching of

Intelligent Design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to ...

led Haught to write such books as ''God After Darwin, Deeper than Darwin'', and ''Making Sense of Evolution''. These and other works have led to numerous lectures on theology and evolution nationally and internationally. In his works, John Haught argues that an open-minded search for intelligibility requires a plurality of distinct “horizons of inquiry,” allowing for the harmonious cohabitation of science (including evolutionary biology) and religious belief. Haught views science and religion as two different and noncompeting levels of explanation, asserting that "science and religion cannot logically stand in a competitive relationship with each other." In 2005, Haught testified on behalf of the plaintiffs at the Harrisburg PA trial against the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools. His testimony earned him the �
Friend of Darwin
�� award from th
National Center for Science Education

Science and Religion

John Haught’s lectures and works focus on a vision of reality that provides room for both scientific inquiry and a biblical understanding of God. In Haught’s perspective, everything should be open to scientific study, including human intelligence, ethical aspiration, and religion. Haught posits that science is one of many avenues to providing a fruitful understanding of nature since there are distinct and noncompeting levels of explaining all natural phenomena. By allowing for different reading levels, one can avoid the conflation of science and religion whereby physics spills into metaphysics, or evolutionary biology into a whole worldview. According to Haught, a major obstacle to adopting a plurality of reading levels is the persistence of biblical literalism which erroneously looks to the Bible as a source of scientific truth. In his view, approaching ancient religious texts with modern scientific expectations is the source of unnecessary and anachronistic confusion that makes the Bible, and the biblically based faith traditions, seem incompatible with modern science. In works, such as ''God and the New Atheism'', Haught aims to show that

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...

, and

Jerry Coyne Jerry may refer to: Animals * Jerry (Grand National winner), racehorse, winner of the 1840 Grand National * Jerry (St Leger winner), racehorse, winner of 1824 St Leger Stakes Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Jerry'' (film), a 2006 Indian fi ...

have adopted the same misplaced

biblical literalism Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical hermeneutics, biblical interpretation. It can equate to the dictionary definition of wikt:literalism, literalism: "adherence to the exact letter ...

as their creationist opponents. Haught disputes the contention of

New Atheists The term ''New Atheism'' was coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in 2006 to describe the positions promoted by some atheists of the twenty-first century. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not si ...

that God is a quasi-scientific hypothesis now rendered obsolete by modern

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

, and

. Emphasizing that science and theology represent two distinct horizons for looking at the story of life and the universe, Haught argues in his various lectures and writings that “it is the mission of a theology of nature to integrate them into a synthetic vision wherein differences do not dissolve but instead contribute in distinct ways to the larger and longer human quest for meaning and truth.” Haught emphasizes that theology looks for levels of meaning and truth that scientific method is not wired to receive. “Theology has its own horizon of inquiry. It is grounded in a qualitatively distinct set of questions from those asked by scientists and ethicists. The data that give rise to distinctively theological questions include an easily recognizable set of beliefs and ethical commitments that do not show up within the horizon of scientific inquiry, but which every scientist must embrace in order to do science at all. *1. Belief (faith or trust) that the world, including the horizon of scientific inquiry, is intelligible. *2. Belief that truth is worth seeking. *3. Belief that honesty, humility, generosity, and openness in sharing one’s ideas and discoveries are unconditionally right (and hence that the pursuit of virtue is not irrelevant to successful scientific work.) *4. Belief that one’s own mind has the capacity to grasp intelligibility and to distinguish what is true from what is false.”

Recognition and awards

Haught was the winner of the 2002 Owen Garrigan Award in Science and Religion and the 2004 Sophia Award for Theological Excellence. In 2009, in recognition of his work on theology and science, Haught was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Louvain and th
Friend of Darwin
Award from the

National Center for Science Education The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding t ...

Peer Evaluations

In th
May 25 - June 1, 2015 issue of ''America: The National Catholic Review''
Robert E. Lauder, Professor of Philosophy at St. John’s University, provided a review of John Haught’s works, including, ''What is God? How to Think About the Divine'' (1986), ''God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, and Mystery and Promise''. Other expert evaluations of the works of John Haught include Carter Phipps, the author of ''Evolutionaries: Unlocking the Spiritual and Cultural Potential of Science’s Greatest Idea'' (2012). Phipps’ article, “
A Theologian of Renewal
'”, won a Gold Folio award for editorial excellence. Dr. Haught’s latest book is The New Cosmic Story, Inside Our Awakening Universe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) about the emergence of religious consciousness in the long cosmic process. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217032/new-cosmic-story Forbes Magazine called The New Cosmic Story the “Book of the year.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2017/12/31/book-of-the-year-the-new-cosmic-story/.

Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Board of Education Expert Witness Testimony

Haught testified as an

expert witness An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...

for the plaintiffs in the case of

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'', 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005) was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design ...

. He testified that the effect of the

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to ...

policy adopted by the Dover School board would "be to compel public school science teachers to present their students in biology class information that is inherently religious, not scientific in nature."Report of John F. Haught, PhD
Expert Witness Pre-Trial Statement for

. April 1, 2005. He also testified that

materialism Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...

, the philosophy that only matter exists, is "a belief system, no less a belief system than is intelligent design. And as such, it has absolutely no place in the classroom, and teachers of evolution should not lead their students craftily or explicitly to ... feel that they have to embrace a materialistic world-view in order to make sense of evolution."

Debates, Lectures, and Writings

Haught has participated in several public debates about the compatibility of

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

and

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

, sharing the stage with

at the City University of New York in 2009, Kenneth Miller at the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...

in 2011, Taking issue in the letter with Coyne's characterization, Haught's opposition to the release and Coyne's final list of Catholic "evils" as a way to end the presentation, Haught explained that he sought to "protect the public from such a preposterous and logic-offending … presentation."

Books

*''Nature and Purpose'', 1980, University Press of America, *''The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose'', 1984, Paulist Press, *''What Is God?: How to Think about the Divine'', 1986, Paulist Press, *''What Is Religion: An Introduction'', 1990, Paulist Press,
''Science & Religion: From Conflict to Conversation''
1995, Paulist Press, *''Science and Religion: In Search of Cosmic Purpose'', 2000, Georgetown University Press 2001 reprint: *''God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution'', 2000, Westview Press 2001 reprint: :
2nd Edition of ''God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution''
2008, *''Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution'', 2001, Paulist Press, *''In Search of a God for Evolution:

Paul Tillich Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran Protestant theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologi ...

and

'', 2002, American Teilhard Association, *''Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution'', 2003, Westview Press, hardcover: , paperback: *''The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose'', 2004, Wipf & Stock Publishers, *''Is Nature Enough?: Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science'', May 2006, Cambridge University Press, *''God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens'', December 2007, Westminster John Knox Press, *
Christianity and Science: Toward a Theology of Nature
', 2007, Orbis Books, *
Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God and the Drama of Life
', February 2010, Westminster John Knox Press, *''Resting on the Future, Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe, 2015,'' Bloomsbury Academic, *''The New Cosmic Story, Inside Our Awakening Universe, 2017,'' Yale University Press,

References

External links

*
John F. Haught Georgetown University faculty website

Big Think: A Theologian of Renewal by Andrew Cohen

America: The National Catholic Review: Searching for God with John Haught
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haught, John Georgetown University faculty 21st-century American Roman Catholic theologians 20th-century American Roman Catholic theologians 1942 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) St. Mary's Seminary and University alumni Catholic University of America alumni Theistic evolutionists

Life

Academic Career and Systemic Theology

Inspiration and influence

Science and Religion

Recognition and awards

Peer Evaluations

Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Board of Education Expert Witness Testimony

Debates, Lectures, and Writings

Books

See also

References

External links