For a long time I have been a fan of John Haught’s work. He is a Catholic theologian, invested in the conversation between religion and science, who brings together two of my favorite thinkers – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Alfred North Whitehead. His recent award winning book, The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe, Haught’s mature theological voice is at work in a serious way. There he argues that an adequate understanding of cosmic history requires attention to the emergence of interiority, including religious aspiration. We discuss that and a number of other topics in this conversation including…
- Big History and its inside story
- the relationship of religion and science
- Layered Explanations of reality and meaning
- 3-fold pattern of growth: Divergence, Convergence, and Emergence
- the cosmological literalism of the New Atheists – a modernist form of fundamentalism
- the narrative shape of the cosmos
- Teilhard, Lonergan, Whitehead, Polyani
- the nature of religion in the evolution of homo sapiens
- ethical predicaments from the ecological crisis to abortion
- the role of beauty in the cosmos
- His article, Trashing Teilhard: How Not to Read a Great Religious Thinker
John F. Haught is Senior Fellow, Science & Religion, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University. He was formerly Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University (1970-2005) and Chair (1990-95). His area of specialization is systematic theology, with a particular interest in issues pertaining to science, cosmology, evolution, ecology, and religion.
Zesty books from John Haught
Podcast: Play in new window | Download