John F. Haught

John F. Haught (b. 1942) is an American Catholic theologian and Distinguished Research Professor at Georgetown University, where he founded the Georgetown Center for the Study of Science and Religion. Trained at Catholic University of America (Ph.D. 1970), Haught has devoted his career to the dialogue between science and theology, particularly engaging evolutionary biology, cosmology, and the implications of a Darwinian worldview for belief in God. Drawing heavily on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and the evolutionary vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, he argues that an evolving cosmos requires a theology of divine 'persuasive' rather than coercive action, and frames God as the source of novelty drawing the universe toward fuller being. His works include Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (1995), God After Darwin (2000), and Is Nature Enough? (2006). In God and the New Atheism (2008), he criticizes Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens for what he regards as theological illiteracy and an inadequate grasp of religious claims. Haught testified for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) against Intelligent Design, distinguishing theistic evolutionism from ID. Critics from the New Atheist camp accuse him of obscurantism and 'sophisticated theology' that retreats from testable claims; some fellow theologians question the adequacy of process metaphysics for classical theism.