Below is a response from author John Haught at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. to Michael Behe's recent review of his book GOD AFTER DARWNIN (see Meta 160). Haught writes to correct the impression presented by Behe that he might be a closet proponent of Intelligent Design Theory. The argument revolves mostly around theological concerns. Haught writes below: "What I object to is the narrowness of any theological approach that seeks to defend the idea of God, or to understand God's relationship to an evolving universe, and especially the evolution of life, by focusing exclusively on 'design.' It is not surprising that such an approach leads many of its proponents to reject evolutionary science or to edit it severely. Design, as Bergson pointed out long ago, is unrepresentative of what we now know about the strange story of life on this planet."

-- Billy Grassie

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From: "John Haught" <HAUGHTJ@gunet.georgetown.edu> Subject: RE:Behe Review of GOD AFTER DARWIN

I want to thank Michael Behe for his thoughtful review of my book GOD AFTER DARWIN. I appreciate the gentle spirit in which it is offered, especially when the issues involved often lead to less moderate discussion. Here I cannot respond at the necessary length, but will only make the following points:

1) In the first part of his critique Behe mistakenly attributes to me an argument for divine design which, in the book, I merely describe rather than defend. In Chapter 3, before going on to develop my own theological interpretation of evolution, I spend some time summarizing several of the already available types of theological response to Darwin. One of these is to widen the argument for design by thinking on a cosmic scale, introducing the so-called fine-tuning of the early universe as a way of doing natural theology after Darwin. But at this point in the book I am talking about the kind of approach that John Polkinghorne and some others have taken, and not yet developing my own approach, which follows in subsequent chapters. Behe may not have read the first paragraph of Chapter 3 carefully.

2) More substantively, Behe is puzzled that after chastising Intelligent Design Theory, I seem to end up defending it after all. However, I never deny that God is the ultimate source of whatever order emerges in nature. What I object to is the narrowness of any theological approach that seeks to defend the idea of God, or to understand God's relationship to an evolving universe, and especially the evolution of life, by focusing exclusively on "design." It is not surprising that such an approach leads many of its proponents to reject evolutionary science or to edit it severely. Design, as Bergson pointed out long ago, is unrepresentative of what we now know about the strange story of life on this planet. And today it fails to advance dialogue between theology and biological science.

Writing as a theologian, my point is that we should not abstract, and then isolate, the element of order from the often disturbing fact of novelty in actually living phenomena. Our understanding of God is considerably diminished by failing to reflect fully on the fact of novelty in nature. The concept of "design" is too stiff to accommodate either the complexity of nature or the depth of religious experience of God.

3) Behe claims that by relating the notion of God to that of information I am by implication defending Intelligent Design Theory. However, it is because God is source of novelty (and not just order), that I can use the notion of information, rather than design, without being inconsistent. "Information" is conceptually more supple and open than "design" to the reality of indeterminacy and randomness. In fact, information draws upon the "breakdown of design" (as in the figurative randomization of letters in DNA, or in any alphabet, that allows for an indefinite number of reconfigurations into specifiable informational sequences) in order to bring about new forms of order. Informationally speaking, order devoid of novelty is mere redundancy, just as novelty without order is sheer noise. The idea of information holds novelty, indeterminacy and disorder much more tightly to its inner meaning than does that of design. If intelligent design theorists would understand "design" according to this wider sense of "information" then they would be much more open to Darwinian and neo-Darwinian biology than they in fact have been.

4) Finally I'm glad that Michael Behe enjoyed reading GOD AFTER DARWIN; I also very much enjoyed reading DARWIN'S BLACK BOX. I make sure that my students become familiar with its argument, and I suspect that discussion of it has enriched many science and religion courses in the last few years.

John F. Haught Professor of Theology Georgetown University

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Published   1999.12.10