The UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions Annual Lecture took place on Thursday 26th September in the beautiful surroundings of Newman University Church, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin. The UCD Newman Centre is a recognised research centre of University College Dublin based in UCD School of Philosophy, and is dedicated to promoting and supporting interdisciplinary academic research into religion and faith in all their aspects, with inclusivity towards different religious traditions, perspectives, and values. The Centre is organised around several different research projects, including ‘Newman Studies’, ‘Religion and Science’, ‘Islam in Ireland, and ‘Jewish Thought and Contemporary Philosophy’.
This year’s annual lecture was delivered by the renowned philosopher and theologian Rev. Prof. Sarah Coakley. Sarah Coakley is the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, emerita, University of Cambridge (2007-18), and earlier in her career held positions at the Universities of Lancaster, Oriel College, Oxford, and Harvard Divinity School (Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity, 1995-2007). In 2012 she gave the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen University, and since then has continued to work in the contested areas of evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, and theology. Amongst her various other publications are: The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation (2024); The New Asceticism (2015); God, Sexuality and the Self (2013); (co-ed.) Evolution, Games and God (2013), and Powers and Submissions (2002, new edition forthcoming).
Prof. Coakley’s lecture was entitled ‘Natural Theology in a Changed Key? What Newman might have thought about the Contemporary Debates on Evolutionary Cooperation’. She began by describing the recent view that evolution should be understood in terms of the operation of ‘selfish’ genes, and as devoid of either positive meaning or discernible structure. Yet, she argued, the evolutionary phenomenon of ‘cooperation’, when mathematically understood, cannot be fully accounted for by the assumption of genetic ‘selfishness’ alone; and moreover that it may, by a series of steps, lead inexorably to the question of a ‘natural’ basis for ethics, and thence to the question of God. Drawing creatively on the thought of John Henry Newman in the last section of her lecture, Coakley suggested that Newman’s notion of the ‘illative sense’ (developed in his Grammar of Assent of 1870), along with his own responses to Darwin’s theory of evolution, may help chart a way forward in assessing the ongoing possibility of a contemporary 'natural theology’.
The lecture was well attended despite the appalling weather, and was followed by a lively question-and-answer session and a very pleasant dinner with the speaker. A video recording of the lecture—as well as of previous Newman Centre annual lectures delivered by Prof. Peter van Inwagen (Professor emeritus, Notre Dame University), Dr. Tasia Scrutton (University of Leeds), and Prof. Dean Zimmerman (Rutgers University)—is available here. If you would like to receive updates on the activities of the UCD Newman Centre, please email the Director, Assoc. Prof. Daniel Esmonde Deasy (UCD School of Philosophy), at daniel.deasy@ucd.ie. All Centre events are open to free to attend, and typically also recorded.
