Monday, November 7, 2011

Haught vs Coyne: The Q&A

Here's an excellent summary of the Q&A from the debate. It's from Eric MacDonald at Choice in Dying: Q&A: Haught on God: Bitter, Impolite and Wrong.

He has a blow-by-blow account of the questions and answers following the debate but I especially like this ....
The assumption that science decided to leave out questions of god, meaning, purpose and value is a caricature of the history of science, and Haught, who claims to be making a serious attempt to show the compatibility of science and religion, must know this. If he doesn’t, and he really thinks that science made such a decision — how does “science” do this, by the way? — then his misunderstanding of the relation of science and religion is total.

When Haught turns around, then, and castigates Jerry by saying that everything that he said was a caricature, that every quotation that Jerry took from Haught’s work was taken out of context, and that instead of reading carefully and thoughtfully Jerry got his idea of god and theology from creationist websites, this was undoubtedly the most aggressive and impolite move of the whole debate. Listen to what he says:

Remember that John Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian. As far as I know he has never dissociated himself from the main teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. If he doesn't believe in any of the stuff that Jerry mentioned then isn't it up to him (Haught) to clarify what he does believe in?

Does he believe in the resurrection? Does he believe that humans have souls? Does he believe in miracles? Does he believe that God answers prayers? Does he believe the Nicene Creed? Are all these things compatible with science?


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