Evolution, the Universe, and Divine Influence

There are two groups of people who place great emphasis in design -- those who insist on Intelligent Design (and conservative creationists) and Evolutionary Materialists.  The latter group, led by Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, have basically equated a theological interpretation of the universe with a William Paley-like Design option, find it wanting and then reject any other possibility of divine influence or involvement in the universe.  John H. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian with Process inclinations who offers a different perspective in his book Making Sense of Evolution.  I'm nearing the end of the book, just a few more pages, but before writing a full review I wanted to give notice to Haught's understanding of divine influence, one that he derives in large part from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the late Jesuit Geologist/Theologian. 

Haught notes that Teilhard has been both neglected and ignored both by theologians and by scientists, but that he believes is a mistake.  The problem, he suggests, with Teilhard is that while he distinguished in his own mind between his science and his theology, it wasn't always clearly demarcated in his writings. 

The point I'd like to bring out is the possibility of divine influence in the universe as Haught understands it.  He writes:

As long as the universe is thought of in a strictly materialist manner, it will appear impermeable to divine influence.  But the character of the universe is such that it has never been utterly mindless and spiritless at any time.  So at least in Christian terms, it is always open to the creative movement of the Holy Spirit.  (p. 145).  

What Teilhard does is suggest that the development of the "sphere of the mind" or noosphere is not only part of the evolutionary process, but that it has always been present, so that the universe/nature has never been completely mindless.  This fact allows room for the possibility of divine influence. 

Haught writes:

Divine action in the world may be hard to understand as long as nature is taken to be essentially mindless, but it turns out that the very idea of mindless (or spiritless) matter is a logical illusion, stemming from science's inability to "see" the interior side that comes out into the light of day most explicitly in the evolution of human consciousness and the noosphere.  It is the interior vein of "consciousness" running throughout cosmic history, and especially in the dramatic depths of life, that allows the Spirit of God to penetrate the natural world, luring it toward more intense modes of being.  This interior side of nature, a strain invisible to science, also allows for the incarnate and now-risen Christ to gather the entire universe, physically and not just metaphorically, into his eucharistic body.  (p. 145). 

Our problem in envisioning divine action is that we continue to have this idea of God the engineer building a machine.  This is the vision given birth by Newton and Paley, but evolutionary science has undermined Paley's vision.  But, that does not mean that there is not another layer, one that science can't see, that allows for God to bring the universe into God's future, one that is pregnant with promise and hope.