Question

John Haught has said in his writings: "Evolution makes very good sense scientifically speaking. But does it make good sense theologically as well? Not everyone thinks it does. Religious believers who find evolution contrary to faith usually do so because they are focusing on the complex 'design' that scientists have discovered in cells and organisms. They insist that life's chemically and physically improbable architecture points to a divine intelligence that current biology cannot explain. Evolution-inspired atheists, however, usually respond that the architecture of cells and organisms is imperfect, even though awe-inspiring. 'This imperfection - the manifold design flaws of life - ,' writes David Barash of the University of Washington, 'points incontrovertibly to a natural, rather than a divine process, one in which living things were not created de novo, but evolved.' I propose, however, that religious thought can make significant contact with Darwin's science if instead of focusing on design it turns its attention to the drama of life. The typically design-obsessed frame of mind through which so many devout theists, as well as staunch atheists, are looking at the question of God and evolution is a dead end both scientifically and theologically." Describe Haught's main point here.

Answer 1

Haught's main point here is that theological views about evolution’s theory in science, either religious believers or atheists, will lead nowhere because they are focusing in a pointless debate. Both are focusing in the architecture or design of the cells to sustain or deny the divine as an intelligent creator, but instead they should look in the drama of life.

While the religious believers argue that biology can’t take account of creation and life in their findings about cells and only the divine can explain it, the atheist use the same findings to deny the need of a divine creator and to say things are not created but rather evolved. Haught himself does not see that Darwin’s findings supports the controversy between evolution and creationism, he thinks that these scientific finds also make sense theologically as evolution can be seem as part of the divine flowering.