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Is Nature Enough?: Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science, by John F. Haught
Download Ebook Is Nature Enough?: Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science, by John F. Haught
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Is nature all there is? John Haught examines this question and in doing so addresses a fundamental issue in the dialogue of science with religion. The belief that nature is all there is and that no overall purpose exists in the universe is known broadly as 'naturalism'. Naturalism, in this context, denies the existence of any realities distinct from the natural world and human culture. Since the rise of science in the modern world has had so much influence on naturalism's intellectual acceptance, the author focuses on 'scientific' naturalism and the way in which its defenders are now attempting to put a distance between contemporary thought and humanity's religious traditions. Haught seeks to provide a reasonable, scientifically informed alternative to naturalism. His approach will provide the basis for lively discussion among students, scholars, scientists, theologians and intellectually curious people in general.
- Sales Rank: #425449 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Cambridge University Press
- Published on: 2006-05-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .51" w x 5.43" l, .71 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 232 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
'Is nature Enough ... can be recommended not only to all those interested in Haught's theology and/or working in the field of evolutionary biology but also to all those, religious or not, with an interest in these key philosophical issues of truth and epistemology. this, combined with the refreshingly accessible style of Haught's writing result in a book of worth to both students and academics alike.' Louise A. Hickman, Newman University College
About the Author
John F. Haught is Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Georgetown University. His area of specialization is systematic theology with particular interest in issues pertaining to science, evolution and religion.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Is nature enough
By John Hunter
Interesting viewpoints on the philosophy of understanding reality. Not compelling however. Neither naturalism nor theology has the answer,so, we are really no closer to grasping or being grasped by truth.
68 of 78 people found the following review helpful.
Defending Theological Naturalism from Darwinism and Intelligent Design
By Fritz R. Ward
NOTE TO READERS: This review was subjected to a negative vote campaign on Sept 5, 2007. The express intent of this campaign is to prevent people from reading books critical of Darwinian evolution. It is a silly and juvenile tactic that reflects personal desparation, and should not be taken as a reflection upon this book or the author. REVIEW FOLLOWS.
John Haught is a theological naturalist. A product of 18th century British theological thought, he sees God as both independent of and simultaneously within the universe we inhabit. But, he also believes that universe cannot reveal, at least in the strictly scientific sense (which he terms "theory"), any understanding of God. Instead, he suggests our experience of God must be understood by other means of "knowing," namely beauty, intersubjective, affective, and narrative means of understanding. This tendency to separate means of knowing and to find God in some, but not all of these means, is part and parcel of the theological naturalist position that has a strong following in theology today. It is popular because it effectively removes God from the problems of suffering in the world (a theodicy) and simultaneously insulates religious thought from the threat of scientific developments that might undermine a literal reading of various religious texts.
Although Haught clearly supports theological naturalism, he is very concerned by two modern intellectual movements that would seem to challenge it. The first is a pure "naturalism" that asserts nature is all there is. He correctly identifies Darwinian thought as the prime supporter of this form of naturalism. This line of reasoning suggests that since science can find no "evidence" for God, God must not exist. It further argues that to believe in a God (or Gods) is inherently an irrational endeavor. Theological naturalism is also challenged by the intelligent design movement which sees in nature evidence of the handiwork of God. ID theorists claim to find evidence of design in nature that (might) point beyond purely natural causes. Both trends undermine the claims of theological naturalism and this book is Haught's attempt to respond to each.
Against the 'atheistic naturalists' (a term I use to distinguish these people from Haught's own theological naturalism--he simply calls them naturalists and refers to their belief system as naturalism) Haught offers a pair of related arguments. His first, repeated using various analogies throughout the book, is that there are often multiple layers of meaning or explanation for any phenomena we observe. Consider a pot of water boiling on a stove. When asked why the water is boiling, one could argue that the molecules within the water are in the process of moving from a liquid state into a gaseous one. This is perfectly correct. It is the level of explanation that Haught associates with science. Another explanation, however, is the possibility that someone turned on a stove. Yet a third level of explanation may be as simple as "I want to make some hot chocolate." (Haught uses tea in his example, but that's what you get for publishing with the very English Cambridge University Press.) Now, the interesting thing is that these "layers" of explanation do not contradict each other. It is entirely possible that I want hot chocolate and the water is boiling because the molecules are transforming from one state into another. Indeed, he notes, we would never contrast these two levels of explanation. No one says that we want hot chocolate instead of changing the state of molecules. But this is precisely what atheistic naturalists do. They claim that a scientific explanation for life inherently precludes a theological or purposeful one. And it is an absurd argument on the face of it.
That said, Haught's argument for layered explanations does not so much "prove" an entity like God as allow for one, and Haught is aware of this, so he offers an interesting puzzle to demonstrate the intellectual poverty of atheistic naturalism. Our minds, he notes, have a "desire to know" and it is a desire that is not satisfied by illusions. The clever part of this argument is that, if you try to disagree with it, you vindicate his very point. Suppose you question the argument. In so doing, you are seeking the truth of the matter, and therefore vindicate his point. But what of it? An atheistic naturalist would simply respond that our desire for truth is a highly successful adaptation, and nothing more. And Haught, true to his respect for layered interpretations, would not disagree with the argument that adaptation at the very least allows for intelligence. But he also notes this explanation is woefully inadequate. If it were true, on what basis would we be able to justify our claims of truth. After all, religion, which the atheistic naturalists claim is an illusion (or delusion, to use Richard Dawkin's phrase) is also an adaptation, and on what basis would we know that atheistic naturalism is any better off? In short, our desire to know and, indeed, the very nature of truth itself, points to a universe larger than the purely material.
Though clever, Haught's arguments are hardly new. Einstein speculated that the most amazing thing about the universe was that we could make sense of it at all. C.S. Lewis grounded his apologetics not in physical reality, but in our ability to perceive it and trust in our perceptions. More recently, Kenneth Miller, biologist at Brown University, has criticized many of his fellow defenders of Darwinism, and in particular Richard Dawkins, for similar logical lapses. Dawkins claims, for example, that religious beliefs are simply "memes" that perpetuate themselves, a sort of disease of the mind. But if "memes" can make us believe in God, then surely they could also make us believe in memes as well. Indeed, it seems the attempt to undermine religious knowledge with "science" is an enterprise that could ultimately undermine all other forms of knowledge with it. (For more on this subject, I strongly recommend Miller's Finding Darwin's God despite the fact that I do not agree with all of his observations.) In short, atheistic naturalism is inherently inadequate as an explanation for the universe. It is not so much wrong as incomplete. This is, in part, due to the fact that atheistic naturalists dismiss other forms of knowing as somehow apart from the universe when they are very much a part of it. In short, naturalism does not even describe all of nature, much less what may lie beyond it.
Haught concludes his critique of atheistic naturalism by offering an alternative theological perspective. We find truth in the "memory of God" and we find meaning to suffering, not in the longing for an ideal past which science, correctly, tells us cannot have existed, but in an "anticipation" of the future. These forms of knowledge are not scientific, but again, as Haught points out, that hardly makes them wrong. Indeed, on the question of suffering, Haught points out that an understanding of science, and in particularly some of the more horrific elements of the struggle to survive highlighted by Darwin (think ichneumon wasps laying their eggs inside living catepillars--great for the wasp, but not so good for the catepillar) allows us to form a new theodicy, one in which we recognize that the universe is not a completed work, and indeed, it cannot be. Were it, then it would not be separate from God. We as sentient beings can strive to make it better, and bring a unity to creation and God that is not at present there. In short, the universe, and our role in it, has purpose, and this purpose is simply beyond the scope of science to grasp. But the fact that scientific methods cannot detect it does not make such purpose any less real.
Most of the book deals with Haught's response to atheistic naturalism. He accepts science, and indeed repeatedly says he wants to see science pushed to its ultimate limits. Indeed, the very act of doing so vindicates one of his central proofs for the existence of God, namely that we strive for truth when atheistic naturalism gives us no reason to suppose such an endeavor will be productive. But if Haught finds naturalism inadequate, he is incensed by intelligent design in all its forms. The latter, he feels, is theology "in an explanatory slot customarily reserved for science."(p. 60)
This is not because Haught is unaware of some of the problems intelligent design addresses. He readily admits that life from non-life is problematic, and not merely in the mechanical sense, but more broadly in the informational sense. He recognizes that DNA sequences convey information and this information is separate from the physical structure that contains it. This is precisely the sort of problem William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Dean Kenyon attempt to address and which most of their critics routinely ignore. Haught also recognizes that the very existence of a universe capable of supporting life cries out for explanation and he is rightly dubious of the multiverse claims which attempt to explain away the many and growing number of anthropic coincidences in our universe. But, he cautions that we still cannot turn to theology for answers to these questions, lest science later "explain" them and theology should be discredited. There is something to this argument, but it seems rather odd coming from an author who places such a high value on layered explanations. Should a multiverse "explain" anthropic principles on one level, would it really preclude all anthropic explanations? But one suspects that is not really Haught's main concern anyway. Like his 18th century predecessors, his real concern lies with theodicy. How can we protect God from being associated with the evils we see in the material world? He worries that if we acknowledge that God is in some sense the author of DNA, the "language" of life, that we would be "attributing to God not only healthy but also diseased and unfit organisms..."(p. 68) But even as this claim places him squarely in the tradition of his 18th century predecessors like Thomas Burnet, it is well outside the religious traditions Haught is supposedly defending in this book. Does Haught seriously believe that God is the author, at some layer of explanation, only of the "fit" and not of everything else? This is truly an odd claim, and it suggests a weakness in theological naturalism as a whole. Indeed, in Michael Behe's recent book, he confronts directly Darwin's own problem of the wasps and catepillar. That on some level we experience horror in this is undenable. To deny the existence of a creator on the basis of our experience is absurd, a non-sequetor if there ever was one.
But there is a more fundamental problem with Haught's critique of intelligent design. This is that he is systematically excluding design from investigation. It is true that science can tell us little, if anything, about God. But that is not to say that we cannot still recognize design and speculate about its origins. William Dembski's Design Inference attempts just that. And even if one disagrees with Dembski's proposed filter, the fact of the matter is that we all make design inferences in our everyday thinking. Indeed, to purposefully ignore them would be to deny way of knowing, precisely what Haught attacks the atheist naturalists for doing.
And this ultimately is why Haught's argument fails against intelligent design. The search for truth, Haught argues, is intimately connected to our own "fullness of being."(p. 41) Indeed, one of his strongest criticisms of atheistic naturalism is that it arbitrarily limits our modes of understanding. And yet here is Haught, insisting that we cannot consider the clear implications of design in either the universe or life. We cannot do so in the scientific realm nor, it seems, in the theological. And our fullness as humans is diminished because of it. I can think of no greater argument against theological naturalism. Still, this is a worthy book that will challenge readers from a wide variety of perspectives.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Existance is Bigger and Smarter than Darwin, the unniverse, its basic infrastucture, the boundaries of theortical physics
By peter gentile
John Haugth does a life saving and GOD reviving structured analysis of what's mssing in the limiting physical construct of life as viewed by over-the-top followers of Darwin, otherwise known as scientologists.
Evolution is a inspiring explaintion of what we are now but in the end; the nature of the unniverse, its basic infrastucture, the acknowledeged boundaries of theortical physics and our internal drive to know truth leave ground shaking questions of "why we are here?" unanswered.
The first important step is to pose the right unbiased questions, John Haugth does this with dignity as well as poses potential approachs to derive the answers.
(It could be we humans, at present, do not have the cognitive capability to sort out such answers, it could be that knowledge also has an evolutionary attribute or maybe those knowlegde packets have not arrived here yet..... I hope to survive long enought to know.)
My only critizsem OF THE BOOK is, in order to make key points there is level of redundancy to remind the reader of key arguments, as the arguments border on theology, I found it usefull, but also wearing.
PDG
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