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What follows is the new preface...

As we recently observed the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his landmark book, On the Origin of Species, evolution has become firmly established as the central organizing principle of the biological sciences. Natural explanations for the growth of complexity through time ground all the other sciences, as well, from cosmology and chemistry to neuroscience and psychology. That everything within this universe has emerged through natural processes operating over vast spans of time is now well beyond dispute among scientists and the educated public. Yet even today, families and public school systems remain divided and the evolutionary worldview is still shunned by millions, perhaps billions, of religious believers around the world. Why?

One reason is surely that big changes in thought and perspective take time to be assimilated. A deeper reason is that humans do not live by truth alone. We require the sustenance of meaning—of beauty, goodness, relationship, and purpose. We require comfort in times of sorrow and suffering. We also require perspectives that encourage us to cooperate in ever-wider circles in order to solve ever-larger problems—problems that today encircle the globe.

So long as the scientific worldview is presented in ways that ignore these basic human values—values that religions excel in providing—there is little hope that the devoutly religious will appreciate science for anything more than its technological fruits. The good news is that the coming decades will see each of our religious, ethnic, and cultural stories embraced within a larger sacred context. The scientific history of cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity is our shared sacred story—our common creation myth. It is an epic tale that reaches back billions of years and crowns each and every one of us as heir to a magnificent and proud lineage. This Great Story is open to improvement, as the revelations of science yield new insights, offer new ways of seeing, and alert us to misperceptions. It is open to change, too, whenever more helpful and inspiring interpretations of the facts become available. All this is possible, moreover, without scientists needing to fear that religious interpretations will skew or shade the truth. Nor must religious peoples join the ranks of atheists.

In public lectures that distill the contents of this book, time and again I have seen faces light up when I explain the distinction between private revelation and public revelation and when I advocate the importance of both day language and night language. Both pairs help us value the contributions of objective science without dismissing the subjective realms—artistic, emotive, and spiritual—that served our ancestors for thousands of years and still vitally serve us today. During seven years of itinerant evolutionary evangelism, I have watched young and old alike delight in the astonishing fact that we are made of stardust—that the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, and other atoms of our bodies were forged inside ancestor stars that lived and died before our Sun was born. I have seen, too, this naturalized and cosmic understanding of death comfort those whose grief would not otherwise be consoled.

Scaling down to the inner realm, I have witnessed tearful testimonials from those freed from years of guilt, shame, or resentment after learning our brain’s creation story—that is, how the brain, with its embedded instincts, reflects an evolutionary trajectory from reptilian ancestors to early mammals, primates, and hominids. Others are grateful for the practical tools for improving lives and relationships that an evolutionary understanding of human nature affords. Still others have found that the supernatural claims that linger in the creeds and liturgies need not drive them from cherished traditions of their faith.

Sanity, health, and joy each emerge and are sustained only in right relationship with reality. Thank God for Evolution is thus a call to integrity, to wholeness, to sustainability—individually and collectively. In the year since its publication, events have validated and expanded the understanding of deep integrity outlined herein. From sex scandals in politics to crimes of greed on Wall Street, the underbelly of modernity and postmodernity is now vividly apparent. Thanks to discoveries in evolutionary psychology and evolutionary brain science, however, we can begin to improve institutions so that vital social structures can thrive despite human foibles. Equally, we can look to a future in which religious worldviews are free of the fundamentalism that fuels extremism.

How was the world made? Why do earthquakes, tornados, and other bad things happen? Why must we die? And why do different peoples answer these questions in different ways? The big questions that children have always asked and will continue to ask cannot be answered by the powers of human perception alone. Ancient cultures gave so-called supernatural answers to these questions, but those answers were not truly supernatural—they were prenatural. Prior to advances in technology and scientific ways of testing truth claims, factual answers were simply unavailable. It was not just difficult to understand infection before microscopes brought bacteria into focus; it was impossible. Without an evolutionary worldview, it is similarly impossible to understand ourselves, our world, and what is required for humanity to survive. For religious leaders today to rely on prenatural answers puts them at odds not only with science but with one another—dangerously so. Their resistance, however, does make sense. Until scientific discoveries are fleshed into the life-giving forms of beauty and goodness (as well as truth and utility), scriptural literalism will command power and influence.

A meaningful view of evolution is good news for individuals and families, and also for communities, nations, and our world.

It is good news at these larger levels because a sacred, deep-time understanding of history and our evolutionary heritage is the very foundation needed for facing global challenges of our own making. It will encourage us to act, moreover, with compassion and inspired dedication. I offer this book and its stories of awakening toward this noble and necessary end.

» Hear Michael Dowd read the new preface to the paperback here.

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A Brand New Thing Under the Sun

by Tom Atlee

As a civilization we face challenges to our usual ways of doing things, our social, economic, and political systems -- all our systems, and even our cultural stories and technologies.  50, 100, 250 years from now, there is no way that we will look anything like we do today.  No way.  We are going to be radically different, one way or another. Some of those possibilities are truly thrilling, such as creating a truly sustainable, just, wise, enjoyable civilization for the first time on earth.  Other possibilities are downright terrifying.  For example, by continuing on our current path we could push climate change so far, we could make the climate so hot, cold, and/or wildly variable that Earth becomes unlivable for most complex life forms, including ourselves.

Whatever else we believe or know or do or don't do to address the crises of our times, there are three overarching fundamental realities that will shape what happens for us humans in the next 50-250 years -- and ALL of them have to do with evolution.  Here are the fundamental realities of our times, which are fundamental realities of life:

• Those living beings, communities, and species that do not fit do not survive.
• Those that change to fit the realities of their situation, do survive.  And finally
• CONSCIOUS living entities thrive and sustain themselves into the deep future to the exact extent that they continue to craft their fit with elegance and wisdom.

In short, the only way we'll make it, folks, is to get real about evolution -- to get really real about our role in the evolutionary process.  To get real about the role of evolution in our world, our lives, our destiny.  The only way we'll make it is to wake up into the evolutionary perspective and start acting in ways that make evolutionary sense.

Because our ignoring evolution does not make us any less subject to evolution's laws and creative potentials than the still-evolving finches seen by Darwin in the Galápagos Islands 173 years ago, or the long-gone dinosaurs our children love to worship, or the rapidly changing viruses and bacteria medical science works so hard to stay ahead of. We're all subject to evolution.  We humans are part of this evolving world, and we will survive and flourish to the extent we find new ways to fit well with that world and partner well with the emergent possibilities that are always gestating within it.  The consciousness with which we find our fit, the wisdom and choicefulness with which we make our way into the future, will determine our survival and who we become as our journey unfolds.

And another thing:  This consciousness, this wisdom, this choicefulness are no accident.  They, too, emerged out of the creative dynamic interactivity of our world -- that miraculous process we now call evolution.  Our ability to observe, to think, to know, and to envision and choose -- the very capacities we call consciousness and intelligence -- these are emergent properties of evolution.  They came out of the intensely interactive past, the 13.7 billion year great star story and life story of evolution.  Most important of all, they are in the process of evolving right now, right here in this room, in this community, in this country, on this planet.  And they will continue to evolve through us all in whatever happens after we leave this room.  As long as we exist, we will evolve.

Everything we notice, think, feel, do, create -- individually and together -- our consciousness, our knowledge, our cultures and social systems, our technologies, our stories -- all these unique realities of our humanness are now evolving at an unprecedented rate.  And well they should.  Because their evolution is the key to our survival.  How we shape them, how they shape us, and how we use them to shape our world will determine if and how we flourish or vanish as communities and as a civilization.

Our 21st century predicament did not just happen to us.  We have created the conditions in our world that now challenge us so thoroughly.  We have done and are doing things out of our perceived self-interest that are degrading or destroying the life-support systems upon which we depend.  We will only make it to the extent we wake up to this great evolutionary karmic fact:  We reap what we sow.  Our capacities have evolved from shaping hand tools, vehicles, communities and landscapes to shaping nanotubes, spaceships, global economies and climates.  We have evolved to shape the evolution of our world.  The question now isn't whether we will evolve -- we WILL and are doing that. The question is how consciously and wisely we will go about it.  Because all our individual and collective evolution will only SERVE US to the extent it helps us engage with our world and each other in harmonious, mutual, co-creative ways.

If we fail to harmonize our individual and corporate self-interest with the well-being of the whole of life, we will soon be gone.  We have become too powerful for it to be otherwise.  This is not a fate to which we are doomed.  It is a challenging opportunity to which the evolutionary process has brought us.  And rising to that challenge will constitute a heroic evolutionary leap -- one we can only take consciously.  The more consciously we leap, the more likely we'll succeed with the least unnecessary suffering and the most powerful learning and thrill.

That is why an evolutionary worldview is absolutely essential for humanity in this century.  Because we are not separate from evolution.  All the changes we make and live through are evolution happening now, right here, through us.  To the extent we make those changes consciously -- aware of the big picture of who we are, the Great Story we are part of, and what we are doing in it -- we not only vastly increase our chances for success, but we become a piece of evolution, itself, waking up into consciousness of itself, taking responsibility for itself.  And THAT is a brand new thing under the sun.

There is something important going on there, something that seems to have escaped the notice of most of humanity, but which has been going on for almost 14 billion years.   We humans -- and all our non-human brothers and sisters -- are living manifestations of a Story that has been around, in one form or another, a long, long time.  And now we get one chance to wake up and become the Story conscious of itself.  Our challenge is to wake up fully enough, and in time, to become what evolution is obviously trying to make us:  A conscious, wise version of vibrant Evolution.

It would be sad to waste this opportunity by clinging to business as usual just because it is familiar.  That would mean evolution would have to try waking up through robots or raccoons with intelligence, opposable thumbs, and a lot of complex garbage left behind by a nearly wise species that almost made it.  It is much more thrilling to awaken and tackle the job of conscious evolution with everything we've got and pull off one of the greatest miracles in the history of the universe.

To pull it off we need to focus on three interrelated evolutionary dynamics which, if we apply them wisely at all nested levels of our existence -- to our lives, to the cultures and systems we live in, and to our knowledge and technologies -- we will generate the world we want and transform ourselves into who we most want to be.  The three key evolutionary insights are these:

1. Interacting diversity generates change.
2. Alignment with reality as it really is generates survival.
3. Harmonizing the self-interest of the parts with the well-being of the whole sustains vibrantly evolving complexity.

Underlying all of these is the reality that the dramatic bustle of evolution is actually wholeness transforming itself.  I believe that as we apply these three key evolutionary dynamics to ourselves and our world, we will become increasingly aware of this.  We will come to notice that every moment, thought, and response is exactly this.  And then, as we gradually and thoroughly awaken to ourselves and our world as Wholeness transforming Itself, we will simply become evolution, seamlessly and joyously unfolding.

The Clergy Letter Project

by Jon Cleland-Host

The Clergy Letter Project was started in 2004 by Dr. Michael Zimmerman (photo left) in response to creationist successes at the local (Wisconsin) school board.  Working with local Christian clergy, a letter was drafted confirming the compatibility between Christian religion and evolution.  The letter was signed by 200 Christian clergy and delivered to the local school board, contributing to their reversal of the creationist polices.  After this initial success, the Clergy Letter Project went nationwide, quickly gathering thousands of signatures from Christian clergy.  As the movement has grown, “Evolution Weekend” was introduced (the weekend closest to Darwin’s Birthday February 12th) as a focal time for congregations to address the need for understanding evolution.  The website (Google it) has expanded to include over 200 sorted example sermons, free scientific consultants, news releases, and articles.  The next article is a report on Evolution Weekend 2009 by Dr. Zimmerman.

In the weeks leading up to Darwin’s 200th birthday this past February, several of us discussed and implemented projects of various sizes to support the event.  My contributions were sorting the sermons for the Clergy Letter Project (see their article in this issue), working with Connie Barlow to put together a Darwin Day service packet for UU ministers, and to supply five sample letters to the editor to use as input for writing to local newspapers about Darwin Day.  With the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species coming this fall, there soon will be more opportunities for all of us to help others find the joy and purpose that an evolutionary worldview brings.

Successful 4th Evolution Weekend!

by Michael Zimmerman

The fourth annual Evolution Weekend was a resounding success by any measure used to evaluate it. Evolution Weekend is sponsored by The Clergy Letter Project and it is designed to provide an opportunity for individual congregations around the world to discuss the compatibility of religion and science while elevating the quality of the discussion on this important topic. Although each congregation acts independently and designs its own activities, each is connected thematically to every other participating congregation. In this way, congregations around the world are linked together and, collectively, all make a unified and powerful statement about the compatibility of religion and science.

This year 1,049 congregations representing each of the 50 United States as well as 15 separate countries participated. In this, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, On the Origin of Species, participation soared by almost 30 percent over last year. Indeed, participation has increased every year by this impressive percentage!

Additionally, the media significantly increased its coverage of Evolution Weekend this year with reports, for example, both on NPR and on Fox News as well as in a host of other media outlets. You can scan some of the coverage on The Clergy Letter Project’s media page.

Many of the clergy members participating reported that attendance at their services was increased because of the topic. And the comments from congregants have been overwhelmingly positive. According to a report out of Maryland, “One woman came up to us afterwards and said, with tears in her eyes, that she’d been waiting 50 years to hear this message from her church.” A minister from Connecticut had a similar response, “This is the first year I have preached this, and in a church that sits enmeshed in Yale and has grad students and professors as members, the response was tremendous, with people saying they had waited many years to hear a pastor speak on this topic.” Another clergy member from Colorado commented about Evolution Weekend 2009 as follows, “The only complaint I received from the congregation was they wanted to make a bigger deal out of the event.  So in 2010 we’ll see what we can add to make it more of an event above and beyond just the worship service.”

Yet another clergy member, this one from Ohio, noted that “The response to our sermon was very positive.  As one of our members said to us today, ‘It's great to belong to a church where we are encouraged to think.’” And one from Oklahoma enthused, “My series on science and religion - and showing a movie on Darwin was a hit!  People thanked me for speaking out.  I guess I don't think of it as speaking ‘out’ rather it is what I passionately believe!  Make sure you put us on the list for next year!” A similar response was received from New Zealand, “We enjoyed hosting a special evening at which we showed the excellent movie Paradise Lost and had an invited speaker.  We drank some good wine together and enjoyed lively debate.  Some young people who attended were amazed that a church would host such an evening.”

In one Texas congregation where science education at the state level is under attack by religious fundamentalists, Evolution Weekend sparked quite a flurry of activity. “Friday night, we had a guest speaker, a young assistant professor from the University of Texas who helped everyone understand the issues of science, Darwin, creationism and intelligent design.  Sunday morning, we watched the video “Kansas v. Darwin” and then had an hour with our local member of the State Board of Education (who happens to be on the correct side of our state-wide debates).  That, in turn, led to a campaign to get members of the congregation to write their friends in districts where other members of the SBOE are iffy and to ask doctors, scientists and others to push these people to keep their votes in favor of high-quality science and not to give in to pressure from the rightwing.”

The Clergy Letter Project has become fully enmeshed in the battle for high quality science education and broad respect for religion in Texas.

Along with The Center for Inquiry, The Clergy Letter Project has sponsored an informative web page presenting a wealth of information about the controversy. The site has received rave reviews from many sources. Not everyone is so positive, however! Don McLeroy, chair of the Texas State Board of Education and the person most responsible for undermining the science standards proposed by a group empanelled by the Board, has recently endorsed a self-published book entitled Sowing Atheism: The National Academy of Sciences’ Sinister Scheme to Teach Our Children They’re Descended from Reptiles by Robert Bowie Johnson. In his book, Johnson attacks members of the clergy who have signed The Christian Clergy Letter and makes the following outlandish statement, “In my judgment, only morons—more than 11,500 morons in this case—could sign a letter maintaining that the ‘timeless truths of the Bible’ are compatible with the billions of unpredictable aberrations of evo-atheism. What do these apostate morons celebrate at their Sunday services, the lies about humanity’s origins told by Moses, Jesus, and Paul?”

How utterly appalling that supposedly reputable people would take a serious issue and devolve it into name-calling that would be out of place on an elementary school playground.  It is clear that the more than 12,000 clergy who have signed the Clergy Letters (there are now three such Letters: The Christian Clergy Letter; a Rabbi Letter; and a Unitarian Universalist Clergy Letter) are beginning to scare those whose world view demands that their narrow view of religion be considered the norm.  These folks seem to be lashing out out of fear and insecurity.  The members of The Clergy Letter Project obviously have far more respect for various religious traditions and proponents of those traditions than do those extremists who view their beliefs as the only appropriate beliefs.

If you would like to join this growing movement – a movement characterized by high quality dialogue, respect for science and respect for various religious traditions – and if you might be proud to be called a “moron” for your deeply held beliefs, please visit The Clergy Letter Project on the web or on Facebook. If you’re a clergy member who is either a US citizen or working within the United States and if you would like to add your name to one of The Clergy Letters, send a note to Michael Zimmerman and you’ll be added immediately. Similarly, if you and your congregation would like to participate in Evolution Weekend 2010, drop Michael Zimmerman a note and you’ll be added to that list.

Finally, The Clergy Letter Project has a list of more than 640 scientific consultants from 29 countries ready to help clergy members deal with scientific issues that might arise when discussions of the compatibility of religion and science. If you’re a scientist and if you would like to be added to that list, please contact Michael Zimmerman.

Michael Zimmerman is the founder and director of The Clergy Letter Project. Additionally, he is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of biology at Butler University in Indianapolis.

Remarkable Creatures

by Connie Barlow

This being the Year of Evolution (Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th of his On the Origin of Species), nonfiction readers have a wealth of new and classic books to choose from on the man and his message. And one of them is by my husband, Michael Dowd. Michael’s Thank God for Evolution (reissued in softcover by Plume in April 2009) was one of five books reviewed under the title “Darwin Roundup” in the 8 February 2009 issue of The Los Angeles Times (see link below).

The review actually begins with Michael’s book and then quickly moves on. The biographical underpinnings of the author and his itinerant ministry seems to have struck the reviewer as an opportunity to hook the reader with humor. M. G. Lord writes, “Today the couple has no permanent residence. Dowd thumps Origin of Species as ardently as the Bible. His movement's logo is a Christian fish smooching a Darwin amphibian (which, if you can bear its cuteness, can be purchased on a baseball cap at ThankGodForEvolution.com).

Among the four other books reviewed in the same article, the one that receives the most accolades is, Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution, by well-respected Darwin scholars Adrian Desmond and James Moore. This book is poised to roundly defeat (at least in intellectual circles) a long-standing contention that establishment of evolution as fact and natural selection as the processs underlying it promotes rascism and other antagonisms between human groups. To the contrary! Indeed, I recall how taken I was more than two decades ago when I read Voyage of the Beagle and there encountered Darwin’s strong words against racism, slavery, and the brutal treatment of domestic animals — all of which he encountered in his explorations of South America.

Those of us within the sciences know, of course, that the measure of the man (or woman) who originates or supports a scientific theory should have no effect on how the scientific community as a whole judges the merits and usefulness of the theory. Nonetheless, because all battles against the evolutionary worldview now unfold entirely outside of science, Darwin’s Sacred Cause should make it decidedly old-fashioned to continue to blame Charles Darwin and his scientific success for cruel philosophies and practices advocated by political and intellectual leaders whose influence was on the wane before I was even born.

For Michael and me, ever on the road, audiobooks are increasingly the way we keep up on the sciences and cultural ideas that interest us. Thus far we have listened to three fine books of or by Darwin: The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (by David Quammen), Darwin’s Origin of Species: A Biography (by Janet Browne), and Darwin’s own The Voyage of the Beagle. Michael and I equally enjoyed the two new biographies — and we highly recommend both, especially to readers whose tastes incline toward biography and away from science. Though I listened twice to Darwin’s autobiographical sketch of his 5-year voyage, I did it on my own time, as Michael did not have the patience to persevere through long descriptive passages.

But the book that had us “wowing” to one another, and sometimes weeping with joy and pride that our species has been able to discover so much about the past from hidden and scattered evidence — evidence that requires quests that span multiple generations — is Sean B. Carroll’s latest book, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species. A developmental and evolutionary biologist, Sean B. Carroll, in my view, has become the Stephen Jay Gould of this generation in his ability to write science books that scientists and nonscientists both commend.

I liked it so much that I posted my first online review at Audible.com, which I have linked below. But first, the Publishers Weekly review will give you a sense of its contents:

“In this thoroughly enjoyable book, Carroll (Endless Forms Most Beautiful), a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin, provides vignettes of some of the fascinating people who have made the most significant discoveries in evolutionary biology. He starts with some of the experiences and insights of great explorers like Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, then turns his attention to paleontologists who searched for the fossil evidence to support the new theory of evolution. Among them are Eugène Dubois's discovery of Java Man; Charles Walcott's discovery of the Burgess Shale and the evidence it provided for the Cambrian explosion; and Neil Shubin's recent discovery in arctic Canada of Tiktaalik, the intermediary between water- and land-dwelling vertebrates. Carroll closes with studies of human evolution, from Louis and Mary Leakey to the advances of Linus Pauling and Allan Wilson, which indicated that Neanderthals were cousins of Homo sapiens rather than direct ancestors. While there's little that's new here, Carroll does weave an arresting tapestry of evolutionary advancement.”

For those who want to stock up on the evidential basis for evolution in order to ward off denunciations by doubtful friends and relatives, the two best books of 2009 will likely be, Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne and The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins. I have just begun to read the former. Dawkins’ book is scheduled for release in September 2009. Because his 2004 science book, Ancestor’s Tale, has been so useful in my work (it is the basis for an interactive children’s curriculum that I wrote, “The River of Life”), I expect Dawkins’ book to be eloquent, accessible, brilliant — and utterly convincing.

» Connie’s review of REMARKABLE CREATURES on Audible.com

» Connie’s children’s curriculum, “RIVER OF LIFE”

» Book Review in Los Angeles Times, “DARWIN ROUND-UP”

Evo Evangelists Barnstorm Texas

by Connie Barlow

Texas is always a big presence in the ongoing challenges to the teaching of evolutionary science in public schools. Not surprisingly, then, television news stations, radio talk show hosts, and newspaper editors in Texas found our evolutionary evangelism worthy of coverage.

Michael Dowd and I were in Texas for most of the month of February, traveling from Houston to San Antonio to Austin and Waco, delivering Sunday morning sermons, illustrated slide talks, and children’s programs in 18 events hosted by a dozen churches and one yoga center. For example, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (February 12), Michael delivered an evening talk provocatively titled, “Thank God for Evolution.” Sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Huntsville, the program attracted 105 area residents to the venue location: Sam Houston Memorial Museum (pictured above).

The reception was overwhelmingly supportive. Media reports, including VIDEO of an ABC News interview broadcast nationally, can be accessed at the “Texas Photo-Essay” link below.

A highlight for me of our time in Texas was the “Forum” discussion preceding Sunday service at Thoreau Unitarian Universalist Congregation, southwest of Houston. Because I was also scheduled to do a guest sermon there that morning (titled, “Evolution Now”), and because I had a cold, I was fearful that my voice would give out. So, I decided to center discussion not on my words but around an evolutionary parable I had written several years earlier and had posted on TheGreatStory.org website (see link below). The parable I chose was a 4-part dramatic script titled, “Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star.” Although it is suitable for young children, because of the science and the values expressed (especially a celebratory understanding of the death of elders) this particular parable is ideal for adults and youth. Volunteers energetically recited and acted out their scripts. A good time was had by all, and the subsequent discussion was heartful as well as intellectual.

Other highlights for me in Texas were the two religious education classes I guest-taught at Bay Area Unitarian Church in Houston near the end of February. While Michael was presenting the sermon at both morning services, I was in with the kids: first with 1st through 3rd graders; next with the teens. For the younger kids, I presented the first 40 minutes of my highly interactive “River of Life” program (linked below) — with lots of illustrations, guessing games, and song. It is a walk back through time, through our own ancestors and the special ancestors (which Richard Dawkins calls “concestors”) that we share with other “streams” of life. Kids universally love it!

For the teens, I always choose to offer “Your Brain’s Creation Story” (linked below) — which speaks to the challenges that youth especially feel in initiating and maintaining romantic relationships and in saying “no” to influences and substances that can do them harm. A week later, I had more time to walk through these ideas with 30 teens at the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City. As always, at the end of the program I offered free buttons and sticky labels with the brain chart emblem on them. The teens are always eager to take them — as an understanding of our evolved brain is intriguingly useful for just about everyone, and salvific for some.

We happened to be in central Oklahoma when Richard Dawkins gave a talk (to more than 3,000 students and visitors) at Oklahoma University. It was an amazing event. As Michael wrote in his blog,

“Connie and I made the long drive not just to hear Richard speak but to witness a rather unique phenomenon: a scientist/atheist whose presence on a college campus in the reddest of red states had a "rock star" feel to it—and had prompted a state legislator to introduce a resolution "expressing disapproval of the actions of the University of Oklahoma to indoctrinate students in the theory of evolution; opposing the invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak on campus."

More...

» Michael’s blog, “RICHARD DAWKINS: Rock Star in Oklahoma”
» Connie’s PHOTO-ESSAY of the TEXAS events
» EVOLUTIONARY PARABLES
» “RIVER OF LIFE” children’s program
» “YOUR BRAIN’S CREATION STORY” teen program

Connie’s “Evolution Now” sermon:
» PDF
» Audio

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!

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.

Listen to podcast...

Dowd Discovered

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.

“Harnessed to a supernatural dimension, the belief in evolution could itself evolve into a kind of religion. Witness the case of one Michael Dowd, an itinerant minister who calls himself an “evolutionary evangelist” and preaches the “holy trajectory” of evolution. “I thank God for the entire 14-billion-year epic of cosmic, biological, and human emergence,” he notes on his Web site. “Ironically, evolution gives us a more intimate and personal relationship with God because God is no longer far off, unnatural, and impotent. And it gives us a way of thinking about religion that helps us understand how and why religions are different, and how we can cooperate together. Both of these are, to my mind, really Good News.”

In imbuing science with a sense of personal meaning, Dowd resembles Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist who envisioned humankind and the universe evolving in the direction of a divine, infinitely complex consciousness he called the Omega Point. But the two remain an extremely rare breed: devout believers in science whose teleological claims flout the rigors of scientific verification. Unlike Dowd and Teilhard de Chardin, Wilson espouses a strictly secular enthusiasm. However much they may disagree about the ends, though, these very different Darwinian thinkers agree on the means.

“Organisms evolve, and at the end of the day, we are organisms,” Wilson says. “You just can’t deny that.”

Read the full article on DiscoverMagazine.com...

Evolution Weekend

1. 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:

1. The yearly event has significantly raised the quality of the discourse about the relationship between religion and science. Rather than simply hearing such absurd statements as “If you believe in evolution, you’re going to hell,” participants have been able to discuss the positive ways that religion and science may play complementary roles in society;
2. Like The Clergy Letter itself, Evolution Weekend strikingly makes the case that clergy from a host of religions and denominations, and from all around the world, have absolutely no trouble reconciling their deeply held religious beliefs with the tenets of modern science in general and evolution in particular; and
3. Evolution Weekend conclusively demonstrates that the public battle taking place in statehouses and in front of local school boards, in the media and from some pulpits, is not one between religion and science but, rather is a battle between different religious ideologies. In this respect, Evolution Weekend participants are combating those who would have us believe that their particular brand of fundamentalism is the norm. Instead, Evolution Weekend participants are celebrating the fact that our understanding of religion and faith is both broader and deeper than what some would have us believe. They are also showing that we have room for people of many different faith traditions.

Evolution Weekend has been designed as a non-centralized celebration. Each participating congregation constructs an event that makes the most sense within that congregation’s local context. Over the years, some congregations have heard sermons delivered on the broad topic of the compatibility of religion and science (and you can read more than 100 of them on The Clergy Letter Project’s web pages while others have had a lunch discussion. Still other congregations have invited speakers to address them while others have watched pertinent DVDs. The important point is that in every case, the quality of the dialogue about the relationship between religion and science has been elevated.

Some have attacked the event by claiming that the intent has been to raise Darwin to the status of a saint and to pray to him. Nothing could be further from the truth. The event is more about Darwin’s ideas than about Darwin the individual. It is about demonstrating that the choice some demand be made between religion and science is a false dichotomy.

Others have said that the title of the event, Evolution Weekend, is too confrontational. They have indicated that their congregations would participate if the name were changed to something like Religion and Science Weekend. This is probably an accurate assessment. However, there are very important reasons why the name remains Evolution Weekend, even while the message is quite broad. Simply put, the most public battle between religion and science regularly occurs over the teaching of evolution. Because some believe that evolution is incompatible with their religious beliefs, they have regularly attempted to remove evolution from schools or to demand that some alternative, non-scientific view be taught alongside evolution. It is time for all of us to reclaim evolution, to promote the fact that evolution is absolutely central to all of biology and to many of the other sciences as well. To rename Evolution Weekend something else would be to miss this critical opportunity to help promote scientific literacy.

Despite these criticisms, support for Evolution Weekend continues to grow dramatically. Recently, for example, The Clergy Letter Project and Evolution Weekend have been formally endorsed by the United Methodist Church and by the Southeast Florida Diocese of the Episcopal Church.

If your congregation would like to participate in Evolution Weekend 2009, simply send an e-mail note with the name and location of your congregation to Michael Zimmerman. You’ll immediately be added to the growing list of participants EvolutionWeekend.org.

If you’re a member of the Christian clergy in the United States, you might want to add your signature to The Clergy Letter. Or if you’re an American rabbi, you might want to add your signature to The Rabbi Letter. Or, if you’re a scientist willing to work with clergy to answer scientific questions, you might want to add your name and expertise to The Clergy Letter Project’s list of scientific consultants. To do any of these things, just send a note to Michael Zimmerman.

Please help make Evolution Weekend 2009 the biggest and best yet.

Listen to report on NPR.org...
Michael Zimmerman is the founder and director of The Clergy Letter Project. Additionally, he is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of biology at Butler University in Indianapolis.

Projects for "The Year of Evolution"

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."

Download PDF...

Sign Up. Speak Out.

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.

Here’s the opportunity.
Sign up as a media evolutionary, and help give voice to the millions in the middle who embrace both science and spirituality. We’ll email you whenever we find online opportunities for you to join—or even start—conversations in response to reports about Michael, his ministry, and our evolutionary movement. We won’t write anything additional for you to read. We’ll just send direct links to news response blogs where you can contribute as inspired.

Why bother?
Communication is key if we want to build lasting bridges between embattled fundamentalists on both sides of the debate over Darwin vs. Design. It’s been an either/or dialogue for decades, and now it’s time to hear from more both/and voices. According to annual polls, there are millions of us who see no conflict between faith and facts, religion and reason. Let’s speak up and share how seeing the world through evolutionary eyes has deepened our faith and renewed our religious experience.

Without an evolutionary understanding of who we are, where we came from, and where are going, we are doomed to remain divided and destined to fail as species. The gospel—or good news—of evolution is that the choice to evolve is now ours. We are no longer victims of a meaningless, mechanistic Universe or an angry, judgmental God. By living in evolutionary integrity, we are joining hands with the Universal forces that forged us from a barren, rock into life as we know it. Now, that’s good news to share!

Thanks for considering our invitation. We hope you’ll join the conversation!

Name: ------Email: ------

Even Rocks Evolve!

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:

Read more...

Connie's Corner: WHAT’S NEW on The Great Story website

• by Connie Barlow

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

• Photo-essay of a pilgrimage I made in 1994 to Charles Darwin’s home in England
• Photo-essay of a pilgrimage Michael Dowd and I made this month to NASA’s Apollo Flight Center in Houston. The actual room where the Apollo missions were directed is now a historical monument. We regard it as a “Sacred Site of the Epic of Evolution”.
• because the Apollo missions provided the world with the first photographs of the whole Earth from space — that is, the first opportunity for Earth itself (via the human psyche) to admire Earth’s great beauty.
• Summary list of the 26 projects and proposals that they (and collaborating colleagues) are engaged in that would promote a sacred and practical understanding of evolution in many different venues.
• Suggestions for and links to Worship Materials for Evolution Sunday, contributed by Unitarian Universalist lay leader (and scientist) Jon Cleland-host.
• Essay by Connie Barlow that summarizes her work and philosophy in in bringing the Epic of Evolution into religious education for children.
• A short proposal written by Connie Barlow to stimulate the funding and creation of a website to foster musician and videographer collaborations to produce a new form of music video to assist contemplation and sing-along at worship services of liberal churches, on the themes of evolution and ecology, from an interfaith perspective.
• PDF of the landmark essay, “The Sacred Emergence of Nature,” by Ursula Goodenough and Terry Deacon. There is no better way to enter the new paradigm of emergent evolution — both the science of it and the religious implications.
• Online access for purchasing a new CD of songs for praise worship and evolutionary revivals. The CD is by The Cosmic All Stars, with original songs by Keith Mesecher.

Read more at TheGreatStory.org...