John Haught, from Georgetown University, brought us a different angle from which to view creation than Kenneth R. Miller from Brown did yesterday, but very much a complementary one.

Here goes…

The universe is estimated to be about 13.7 billion years old.

Think of it as a library. There are 30 volumes; each volume is 450 pages. Each page represents 1 million years. Using this analogy, the Earth began in volume 21; the Cambrian explosion in volume 29. Dinosaurs are extinct in volume 30 page 385, and modern humans appear in volume 30 on page 450, the last page.

Layer Explanation:
If someone asked you why a pot of water was boiling, you could give her many answers:
  1. because of physics
  2. because I turned the gas on
  3. or because I wanted tea
None of these answers cancels out the other, instead the compliment each other. The same can be said for scientific and religious explanations for events.

Evolution:
In order to understand evolution, there has to be a modification of the understanding of God.

Evolution’s recipe: contingency + natural selection + lots and lots of time

In Haught’s view, there are several ways to rectify evolution and religion:
  1. “Blind Faith: believe that evolution is correct, but our inability to meld it easily with Christianity is because of human ignorance.
              * Job 38

  2. Evolution as divine pedagogy: evolution is our curriculum in the classroom of life

  3. Biblically: The biblical theme of promise
            *Instead of looking for design, which is imperfect, look for promise. And the world isn’t perfect yet because God’s promises haven’t been fulfilled.
            *Darwin’s recipe is consistent with promise:
                   -contingency: nature is open to the future
                   -laws of nature: a universe we can depend on
                   -deep time: indicative of divine patience (like seen in the work of Jurgen Moltmann – “Waiting is never disinterested passivity but the highest form of interest in the other”)

4. Evolution not divine plan

5. (And Haught’s favorite) A Christological Approach
In this view, creation is a result of “self-humbling” on God’s part. An omnipresent God withdraws and allows a space to open up in which something other than God can exist… God allows room for otherness. Evolution is the meandering, experimentation, duration, indeterminacy, unpredictability.

Teilhard
Haught talked about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (who, like Cher and Prince, goes by one name only: Teilhard).

There’s a direction to evolution, a tendency toward centeredness. (Like atoms and cells are centered around the nucleus, vertebrates around the central nervous system, but also how civilization grouped into villages, cities, nations, and now seems to be heading toward globalization, or what Teilhard called “planetization.”)

There’s an increase in complexity, consciousness, freedom, openness to the future… essentially the future is evolving as time goes on, and God is that future.

“The world rests on the future as it’s sole support” - Teilhard