by Michael Dowd

Today, Michael Dowd presented a special Sunday sermon at Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas. Click “Podcast” link below to listen.

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Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd

February 12th is Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. While reflecting on the life and legacy of this great scientist and devoted husband and father, I’ve been struck by how an evolutionary understanding of the universe has, in fact, REALized my religious faith. I now enjoy all the benefits and blessings of religion from a place of knowledge rather than belief. When I look to the past, I am filled with awe and gratitude. When I look around me in the present, I feel love, compassion, and a desire to do everything I can to ensure a healthy world. And when I look to the future, including a future without me, I feel a deep and all-embracing trust.

Thanks to the role that Charles Darwin and countless other evolutionaries have played in enriching my faith and guiding my path, today I have no resentments, no secrets, and no unfinished business. More, I am able to ‘follow my bliss’ full-time with Connie Barlow, my perfect mission partner. If there’s a heaven on this side of death, surely this is it.

I hope you enjoy this second issue of The EVOLUTIONARY TIMES.

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Michael Dowd

by Paul West

The next time you’re passing by your local newsstand, make sure and pick up a copy of the March 2009 issue of Discover magazine that asks the question, “Are we still evolving?” and refers to the role of America’s Evolutionary Evangelist, Michael Dowd.

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Paul West

by Michael Dowd

Yesterday I was interviewed on radio by an 'intelligent design' creationist who kept insisting, "There is absolutely no evidence for evolution!" I was amazed that this person was either unaware or dismissive of our collective best understandings of cosmic, Earth, geological, biological, and human history. Before the interview ended, I determined to write this blog post that offers links to some of the best and most highly regarded web pages and books on the creation-evolution debate. The first set below (mostly wikipedia pages) should be considered essential reading. The second set identifies some of the top books in the field. Beneath that, I have also included my favorite resources that show:

1. How factual knowledge gained through the full range of evolutionary sciences can legitimately and easily be interpreted as religiously inspiring—and why, at this time in history, it is so urgent and fruitful to do so;

2. How the arrow of cosmic complexity upon which the vast majority of the world's scientists agree can be viewed in spiritually nourishing and deeply empowering ways (teleologically or non-teleologically); and

3. Why it is wildly erroneous to believe that ancient mythic texts, an unnatural judge, or otherworldly carrots and sticks are necessary (or even helpful) for superior moral development and healthy societies.

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Michael Dowd

by Loren Acton, NASA Astronaut

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked after my “astronaut” talks is some version of the following, “How was your view of God and religion changed by your flight?” My boring response is that my reaction was basically neutral. I returned with pretty much the same views, beliefs, and hang-ups as I had at launch. My particular hang-up was a continuing and profound disconnect between, on the one hand, what I’d been taught about God at home, in church, and at Bible school and, on the other, my convictions about values like fairness, justice, and love — as well as my life-long learning and experience in the scientific way of thinking.

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Loren Acton

by Michael Zimmerman, The Clergy Letter Project

The fourth annual Evolution Weekend will be celebrated February 13-15, 2009. As of today, more than 1,000 congregations from many denominations and representing 15 countries are scheduled to participate.

Organized under the auspices of The Clergy Letter Project, an organization of more than 13,000 clergy and scientists from all corners of the globe, Evolution Weekend is an opportunity to accomplish a number of important goals:

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Michael Zimmerman

by Joshua Gorman

The EVOLUTIONARY TIMES is thrilled to now be featuring a new section called Evolutionary Youth: the Great Story and the Next Generation.  This section will be supporting the emerging youth ministry and youth movement connected to this work by featuring stories and voices from the next generation, along with providing creative "evolutionary education" resources for children and youth. This issue we feature Great Story Stuff for Kids by Connie Barlow and my own primer on Generation Waking Up: Coming of Age at the Crossroads of Civilization.

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Joshua Gorman

by Connie Barlow and Jon Cleland-Host

In mid January, Connie Barlow, Jon Cleland-Host, Michael Dowd, Joshua Gorman, and Tom Atlee all contributed brief summaries of ongoing and future projects among us that merit attention during this "Year of Evolution" (the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th of his On the Origin of Species).  Next we brainstormed on each project during a two-hour conference call.  Connie then compiled the short summaries into a pdf and posted them online.

A total of 26 projects are listed in that document.  Several are now complete and others are underway.  Most time-sensitive were two proposed by Jon-Cleland Host: "Darwin Day Worship Materials" and "Darwin Day Letters to
Editors."  Both were instigated by Jon, with additions and editing by Connie.  Both were completed on time, and an email was sent to a thousand Unitarian Universalist clergy and lay leaders to alert them to these resources in advance of Darwin Day, February 12.

If you are curious as to what we are up to, check out this link.  Only two or three of the 26 projects will require funding to pursue.  The rest we are just doing for the love of it.  Perhaps you, too, will be inspired to find a way to contribute your talents toward some service or project in this "Year of Evolution."

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Connie Barlow, Jon Cleland-Host

We are excited to announce the initial launch of ThankGODforEVOLUTION.net, an online community platform and companion website to ThankGODforEVOLUTION.com. This site will serve as a meeting ground where people of all religious traditions, scientific backgrounds, philosophies, and spiritual paths can come together to help create a movement and culture that celebrates meaningful interpretations of a science-based, evolutionary worldview. You will have the opportunity to post your ideas, questions, projects, and stories to the community discussion board, and to become part of a dynamic community of inspired individuals and organizations committed to a sacred and meaningful future. From Baptists to Buddhists to Big Bang theorists and beyond, all are encouraged to engage in fresh conversations about matters of ultimate concern and to learn how to apply this work to their own lives.
 
Join the community now at ThankGODforEVOLUTION.net!

by Michael Dowd

A holy view of evolution solves traditional religion's God problem.

What is 'traditional religion's God problem'? Simply this: If taken together and interpreted literally, the world's religious scriptures portray God in ways that we all know in our hearts cannot possibly be true. For example, all of us (even atheists!) know that God cannot possibly be schizophrenic, nor a tribal-cosmic terrorist. Yet that is precisely the view that the world's sacred texts collectively offer. That's traditional religion's God problem.

Please know that I am not exaggerating or overstating the case, and I'm certainly not dissing religion! It is an easily verifiable fact that if you look at the world's religious literature as a whole, God supposedly says and does lots of contradictory, mutually exclusive things. Some traditions say "God is like this, He said this, and He did that." Others say, "NO, God is like this, He (or She) said this, and did that." If all these tales are true, God is either schizophrenic or suffers from multiple personality disorder. Saying "our stories are true and all others are myth" doesn't make the problem go away for humanity as a whole. And it gets worse before it gets better...

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Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd

I am writing and posting this blog shortly after President Obama's inauguration. It is intended to introduce a concept that has been growing inside me for several years and that aches to be launched for others to help shape. For now, I shall call this meme global integrity:

Global integrity is right relationship at and with all nested levels, from the personal to the planetary, valuing the past, benefitting the future.

I believe that promotion of this concept could play a crucial role in moving through the crises now facing our nation (and the world). It establishes an easy-to-understand frame for discerning helpful actions when problems would otherwise seem too big or complex. Global integrity, as I define it here, has a distinctly religious cast. Hence my invitation to religious leaders to join me in discerning what role religion can play in helping our new president and a newly hopeful citizenry in transitioning through this crisis.

Surely I am not alone is sensing that a brilliant, dedicated, and charismatic president absolutely depends on our help. It is only a matter of time before Mr. Obama explicitly calls upon religious leaders to undertake the task of restoring the moral and ethical fiber of individuals and institutions in our nation -- but this time with respect to failings that led to the financial/economic crisis we are now in and the ecological crisis that looms.

Integrity is not just about politicians' private parts or the private lives of citizens; it's about our survival as a species. If religious leaders were to make this shift in focus, we would most surely discover that differences in beliefs and many of the seemingly irresolvable contentions of the past few decades fade into the background. Instead, religious leaders of vastly different faiths and political leanings will find substantial common ground. The common ground, I suggest, is integrity. If religious institutions do not step into the task of vigorously working for more integrous relations and systems at all levels within society, then who will?

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Michael Dowd

by Editors

If you’ve heard about Thank GOD for EVOLUTION, but haven’t gotten a copy yet, we would like to invite you to download a free chapter and see what the buzz is about.

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by Paul West

Public awareness about evolutionary spirituality is growing, and people everywhere are engaging in a new conversation about Creation. Rev. Dowd is regularly invited to speak to media across America and around the world about why he thanks God for evolution, and why he and Connie have committed their lives to teaching and preaching the ‘Gospel of Evolution.’

We would like to invite you to join the conversation and become one our movement’s media evolutionaries. Most major media outlets offer online opportunities to discuss personal views about the news. Reports regarding evolution are real conversation starters in many communities across the country, especially when they include the unorthodox perspective of an ordained, former fundamentalist who now evangelizes evolution as theology—and not just theory.

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Paul West

by Michael Dowd

Journalists and newscasters sometimes describe me as an 'evangelical minister' or ‘Pentecostal preacher', even though I speak far more often in moderate and liberal churches (and in secular settings) than I do in evangelical and Pentecostal venues. Not surprisingly, both religious liberals and conservatives genuinely ask, "In what sense do you consider yourself a Pentecostal evangelical?"

For thirty years I've proudly called myself a Pentecostal, though my political and theological views are by no means right-wing, and for the past two decades I've tended to say "evolutionary Pentecostal", for clarification. My experience in Pentecostal and evangelical contexts has been positive—indeed, salvific—and continues to nourish my life and work. I was raised Roman Catholic but struggled with sex, drug, and alcohol-related issues in my teens, during the mid 1970s. Soon after my 20th birthday, I had a born again experience and went on to graduate from an Assemblies of God college and a Baptist seminary. I pastored three churches in the 1980s and 90s and have been an itinerant evolutionary evangelist for the past seven years. Speaking in tongues (see below for my naturalized interpretation) has been a vital part of my spiritual practice for decades.

The primary reason I unabashedly call myself an evolutionary Pentecostal, however, is this: The core tenets of the evangelical-Pentecostal tradition accurately reflect the nature of the Universe and the human condition so long as they are REALized—that is, made real. And, yes, as I shall explain below, it is easy for an evolutionary evangelical to translate our basic statements of faith in natural, science-based (demythologized), and profoundly life-giving ways . . .

1. The faithfulness of God and the authority of God's word
2. The necessity of Christ and the centrality of the cross
3. The need for conversion
4. The call to live the gospel in word and deed

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Michael Dowd

A meta-religious movement is underway...

Religious luminaries from across the spectrum have resounding praised the evolutionary theology presented in Thank GOD for EVOLUTION. We’ve heard from Roman Catholics, Protestants, Quakers, Evangelicals, Unitarian Universalists, New Thought Leaders, Jews, Budhhists, Religious Naturalists, and more.

by Michael Dowd

Last night Connie and I finished listening to David Christian's masterful 48 lecture (30 minutes each) Teaching Company course: Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity. As I enthusiastically shared in my last post: BIG HISTORY: THE TEACHING COMPANY, no one paints the big picture of cosmic, Earth, biological, and human history ("the Great Story") in all its scientific splendor more beautifully and powerfully than Professor Christian does in this course. (If you only do one thing for yourself educationally this year, I recommend this course above anything else!) Upon completion, I immediately thought of Maria Montessori's 1948 book, To Educate the Human Potential, which Thomas Berry turned me on to twenty years ago. In my opinion, Montessori's greatest gift to humanity (expressed wonderfully in this book) is this vital understanding:

When the Great Story—the epic of evolution, or universe story—is the foundation of education, students can excitedly learn who they are, where they came from, where things are headed, and how all scientific and educational disciplines fit into a coherent whole. More, their imaginations are sparked and they begin to wonder what role they themselves will play in the ongoing story—that is, what their own 'cosmic task' will be and thus how they too will leave their mark upon the world. What could possibly be more important? In Maria's own words...

Since it has been seen to be necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe....

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Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd

I recently received an email from a woman who came to one of my programs, purchased some of our materials, and later had a few of her family members listen to a recording of a sermon of mine. She wrote:

"I wonder if you can answer a question. I had my son and at another time my son-in-law listen to your presentation and they came to the same conclusion: they both said that you reduced God down to a metaphor. Can you tell me that is not so?"

My response: Yes, this is not so! But the fact that two young men had pretty much the same reaction to my sermon suggests to me that either,

A. I'm not very good yet at assisting people in distinguishing imaginary gods from the real Creator, or

B. We as a species have a long way to go before we truly get the difference between trivial and realistic notions of the divine.

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Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd

The universe is real, not imaginary. We all know this. How is it, then, that in recent centuries and for many believers and nonbelievers alike, God as the Creator of the Universe has become less real than the Universe?

What I mean by "real" is precisely as a dictionary would define it—that is, "existing or occurring as fact; actual rather than imaginary, ideal, or fictitious." Here is another definition of real, drawn from the same webpage (dictionary.com): "being an actual thing; having objective existence; not imaginary." Thus my question: Is God today less real than the Universe?

In my previous blog post I offered that there is a radical and vital difference between objectively real answers to big-picture questions and anything we might subjectively say about how these issues impinge upon our lives—that is, how we interpret the meaning(s) of factual discoveries. Big-picture questions that seek factual and interpretive understandings would include: 'How did we get here?' 'How were we made?' 'Who is my brother, my sister, my neighbor?' 'Tell me about my ancestors?' 'Why is there death?' 'What can I trust?' 'What should I care about?' 'Where do I find hope and guidance?'

Below are 18 ways to begin thinking through this core distinction between what is objectively true and subjectively meaningful—applied to the questions and perspectives through which we make meaning of the world and find purpose, value, guidance, comfort, trust, and a satisfying sense of place and mission.

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Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd

All too often I hear evolution being dismissed by scriptural literalists as "Darwin's theory," or "just a theory." For them, understanding of the natural processes of evolution seems to be stuck at the scientific evidence available during the famous Scopes Trial in the 1920s. That is, for them the evolutionary paradigm pertains only to biology - specifically, how the vast diversity of species emerged out of less complex, less diverse forms.

But today, the term 'evolution' applies to far, far more. Consider this historical sequence:

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Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd

Since the beginning of our full-time itinerant evo-evangelistic work, in early 2002, Connie and I have addressed more than a thousand religious and non-religious audiences across North America. We are both humbled and thrilled at how the Evolution Theology (Evo-Theo) message we have been called to communicate resonates with the vast majority of those to whom we've presented, from Catholics and Quakers, to Baptists and Buddhists, to UUs and gurus. We are also grateful for the generous, enthusiastic comments of Nobel laureates and other science and religion luminaries who read Thank God for Evolution (TGFE) and offered their feedback and endorsements. I wrote about responses from science leaders a few weeks ago and about responses from religous leaders yesterday. What follows is a sampling of responses to our sermons, seminars, and other public presentations, from teachers in various secular and religious contexts, as well as from religious leaders and congregants across the theological spectrum, grouped by religous orientation.

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Michael Dowd, Connie Barlow

by Michael Dowd

"AUSTIN - In a major defeat for social conservatives, a sharply divided State Board of Education voted Thursday to abandon a longtime state requirement that high school science teachers cover what some critics consider to be "weaknesses" in the theory of evolution." Dallas Morning News, 22 January 2009

Louisiana (here, too) and Mississippi also have important decisions pending that will influence the teaching of science in public schools.

No matter how these particulars unfold, my prediction is this:

"Until the majority of churches in America preach evolution enthusiastically from the pulpit and teach evolution in inspiring ways in religious education classes, we will never see an end to the science and religion war in America."

For those parents and pastors who truly do believe that exposure to the evolutionary sciences will lead children to question their faith, and especially if a loss of that particular faith (say, scriptural literalism) consigns the child to suffering for eternity in Hell, then of course the war shall continue, even as particular battles are won and lost.

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Michael Dowd

by Connie Barlow

Leading up to Darwin’s 200th birthday, I have posted a number of new pages on TheGreatStory.org.

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Connie Barlow

by Michael Dowd

One of the delightful challenges that Connie and I face in our Great Story-telling ministry is trying to speak meaningfully to a wide variety of religious and non-religous groups. What follows are what I and others consider to be my best blog posts written during the past year and a half (since I began blogging), and the best interviews with me or us.

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Michael Dowd