In her sixth and final lecture of the 2012 Gifford Series, Professor Sarah Coakley returns to her premise, already sketched in the first lecture, that a new confidence in "natural theology is urgently called for in the 21st century, as the world faces global economic and ecological challenges of a sort previously unknown, and the continuing threat of forms of political violence often motivated by false and bloody ideas of "sacrifice". Arguing that theological vision is needed both in discerning the difference between false and meritorious understandings of "sacrifice", and in sustaining an ascetical and eschatological hope, Coakley ends with the crucial epistemological adjunct to her earlier "ethico-teleological" argument for God: a re-deployment of the classic Christian tradition of the "spiritual senses", the marks of sanctifying grace. Evolutionary theory, in all its intriguing variety, is not the final enemy of faith; on the contrary, a deep analysis of its account of cooperation and altruism may lead to a decision for, or against, a sacrificial ontology of hope.
Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation and God
In this series, Professor Sarah Coakley explores the implications of recent developments in the mathematical study of "evolutionary dynamics" for ethics, metaphysics, the philosophy of science and theology. Arguing that the last decades of the twentieth century saw a notable failure of nerve in universal accounts of religious rationality, and a simultaneous obsession with the "selfishness" of evolutionary phenomena, Coakley seeks to clarify afresh the importance of the countervailing sacrificial dimensions of evolutionary processes for central issues in the philosophy of science and ethics. Thereby she moves to suggest a transformed way forward in the task of "natural theology".
Негізгі бет Gifford Lecture 3rd May 2012 - Reconceiving 'Natural Theology': Meaning, Sacrifice and God
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