A John Haught Reader - John F. Haught

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not lift up their hearts and give new incentive to their moral lives. Contrary to the judgment of cosmic pessimists, however, I believe that scientific discovery of an awakening universe is completely at home in a broadly construed theological metaphysics.

      Finally, I want to thank Bradford McCall for organizing the following excerpts and Dr. Charles A. O’Connor for his gracious introduction. (To avoid conflating my present work with what I published earlier, I have decided to make only minor revisions to the material presented here.)

      Books by John F. Haught

      • The New Cosmic Story: Inside Our Awakening Universe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

      • Resting on the Future: Catholic Theology for an Unfinished Universe. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

      • Science and Faith: A New Introduction. New York: Paulist, 2013. Later translated into Lithuanian and Chinese.

      • Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and The Drama of Life. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010.

      • God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008. Later translated into Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Vietnamese.

      • Christianity and Science. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2007. Later translated into Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese.

      • Is Nature Enough: Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

      • Purpose, Evolution, and the Meaning of Life. Ontario: Pandora, 2004.

      • Deeper Than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution. Boulder: Westview, 2003. Later translated into Korean (Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title, 2003).

      • Responses to 101 Questions on God and Evolution. New York: Paulist, 2001. Later translated into Polish, Portuguese, and Korean.

      • God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution. Boulder: Westview, 2000. Later tanslated into Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian, Korean, Russian, and Slovak.

      • Science and Religion in Search of Cosmic Purpose. Editor. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2000.

      • Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation. New York: Paulist, 1995. Later translated into Romanian, Korean, Persian, Urdu, Indonesian, and Chinese.

      • The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose. New York: Paulist, 1993.

      • Mystery and Promise: A Theology of Revelation. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1993. Later translated into Portuguese as Misterio e Promessa.

      • What Is Religion? New York: Paulist, 1990.

      • The Revelation of God in History. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1988.

      • What Is God? New York: Paulist, 1986. Later translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

      • The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion, and the Quest for Purpose. New York: Paulist, 1984.

      • Nature and Purpose. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980.

      • Religion and Self-Acceptance. New York: Paulist, 1976.

      Lectures by John F. Haught Published as Booklets by The American Teilhard Association

      • Teilhard, Big History, and Religion: A Look Inside (Woodbridge, CT: American Teilhard Association, 2015)

      • Darwin, Teilhard, and the Drama of Life (Woodbridge, CT: American Teilhard Association, 2011).

      • In Search of a God for Evolution: Paul Tillich and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Lewisburg, PA: American Teilhard Association, 2002).

      • Chaos, Complexity, and Theology (Chambersburg, PA: Anima, 1994).

Part I: God, Science & Religion

      In relating to another person, whoever it might be, but especially if it is someone I love, I may observe the following: sooner or later, the other person will do something or say something that will surprise me. It may either delight or disappoint me. But if I am to sustain my relationship with the “other,” I will have to revise my impressions of him or her. I will have to move to a deeper level of understanding the other. And, after relating to the other person on this level for a while, I will find occasion after occasion to dig still deeper. Of course, I may resist the invitation to look deeper, and perhaps for the most part I do resist it. But it takes very little experience of other persons to see that there is something beneath the surface of my impressions of them. Other people are not what they seem to be. This is, of course, a truism so obvious that it seems almost too trivial even to mention. But perhaps there is more to it than first appears. Let us dig deeper.

      Not only are others not what they seem to be, but the same is true of myself. There is always more to me than is contained in my impressions of myself. My “self-image” does not exhaust what I am. I need not be an expert in depth psychology in order to validate this observation. I need only a little experience of living to be able to see its truth. Looking back a few years, or even a few months or days, I remember that I thought I knew who I was. But new experiences have reshaped my life. New questions, new feelings and moods, new dreams and fantasies, and new expectations of myself have intervened. I now know that I am not what I thought I was. I may assume at this moment that I am not exactly what I seem to be to myself or to others. Why is this so? Why are others not what they seem to be? Why am I not transparent to myself? This is a troubling question, so disturbing in fact that I usually suppress it. I cling to impressions as though they were foundational truths. I resist going deeper. Why?

      Let us also take note of the fact that the natural and social worlds present superficial impressions of themselves that we must question. They too are not what they seem to be. In the case of nature the point is easily made by looking at science. Not only religion but also science thrives on the conviction that things are not what they seem to be. For example, beneath the world of common sense impressions there is a submicroscopic universe of “counterintuitive” physical occurrences that we cannot picture or even imagine. And in the galaxies beyond us there are likewise unfathomable riches of physical phenomena that, if we could understand them, would expose our world of immediate appearances and impressions as a veil of superficiality. We recoil from the abyss that lies beneath the surface of present knowledge, however, and live under the illusion that our sense impressions or our ordinary experiences of space and time are absolutely

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