Guidelines for Making Wiser Decisions on Public Issues

by Tom Atlee

I have worked for several months to develop the ideas in this article and to articulate them in an accessible way. They are fundamental understandings underlying the co-intelligence vision of a wiser democracy.

If the ideas intrigue you, you can find a longer version with more detailed guidelines and references here. I wrote the abstract below to make it easier for you to see the whole pattern at once. I hope you find both versions interesting and useful.

GUIDELINES FOR MAKING WISER DECISIONS ON PUBLIC ISSUES

As a civilization we have tremendous collective power, but we don't always use it wisely. We can make good decisions, but we face messy, entangled, rapidly growing problems with complex, debatable causes. Efforts to solve one problem often generate new ones. We need more than problem-solving smarts here. We need wisdom.

A good definition for wisdom here is

the capacity to take into account
what needs to be taken into account
to produce long term, inclusive benefits.

To the extent we fail to take something important into account, it will come back to haunt us. But often we only realize we overlooked something long after our decision has been implemented. Certain practices - because they lead us to include more of what's important - can help us meet this challenge. Here are eight complementary ways to do this. The more of them we do, and the better we do them, the wiser our collective decisions will be.

1. Creatively engage diverse perspectives and intelligences. High quality conversations among diverse people with full-spectrum knowledge, using their full human capacities - including reason, intuition, and aesthetic sensibilities - can generate wisdom.

2. Consult global wisdom traditions and broadly shared ethics. Ethical principles common to most major religions and philosophies provide time-tested wisdom, augmented by what we have learned more recently through global science and global dialogue.

3. Seek guidance from natural patterns. Wisdom is embedded in nature, in organisms, in natural forms and processes, and in evolution, providing a vast reservoir of insight and know-how tapped not only by scientists and engineers but by tribal and agricultural cultures.

4. Apply systems thinking. Wisdom comes from understanding underlying causes and taking into account how things are interrelated, how wholes and parts influence each other through power relations, resonance, feedback dynamics, flows, motivating purposes, and life-shaping narratives, habits and structures.

5. Think about the Big Picture and the Long Term. Wisdom grows as we step out of limiting perspectives to understand (and creatively use!) histories and energies from the past, current contexts and trends, future ramifications and needs, larger and smaller scales, and other mind-expanding perspectives.

6. Seek agreements that are truly inclusive. The more people contribute to, engage with, and believe in an agreement, the more likely it will wisely address what needs to be addressed and be well implemented.

7. Release the potential of hidden assets and positive possibilities. It is wise to notice and creatively engage existing energies and resources and to tap the power of people's aspirations which often show up at the rough edges, on the margins of our thinking, our group, our society.

8. Encourage healthy self-organization and learning. Any situation or system has problem-solving and self-organizing capacities which can be released and supported with well-designed forms of invitation, participation, and collaboration - powerful questions, crowd-sourcing activities, incentives, democracy, conversation, games...

9. Co-create accessible, relevant, accurate, full-spectrum knowledge. Fundamental to every one of these principles is the ability of decision-makers to know what's important.

Society's capacity to make wise decisions will be enhanced to the extent these wisdom-generating practices are supported and institutionalized AND to the extent the systemic obstacles to them are removed or bypassed.

"A Dying Breath on a Bloody Battlefield": A Civil War Ancestor Meditation

by Jon Cleland Host

Hundreds dead on July 21st, with hundreds of thousands to follow. That day, just recently past, was the 150th anniversary of the first major battle of the War Between the States (or the American Civil War). Being a Northerner, somehow I missed the emphasis on the enormity of this conflict when growing up, and so I was shocked to learn that well over a half million brave men died in that war. No other war, (not even World War II at 400,000 American casualties, and certainly not Vietnam with less than 60,000) comes close.

Some of us have a personal connection to those soldiers by knowing of an Ancestor who fought in the American Civil War, perhaps great-great-great-grandpa Jim. Reflecting on that person can change the American Civil War from a note in a history book into a stunning chapter in the family history that got you here today – a part of who you are. That person lived a very hard life, without which you wouldn’t exist. Imagine if you were someone with such an Ancestor, and didn’t know it – that you lived day to day ignoring that brave part of yourself. Don’t you want to know if you are descended from a Civil War soldier?

But without finding a Civil War soldier in our family tree, it’s pretty unlikely you are the great-great-great-grandchild of Johnny Reb or Billy Yank, right? Can we make a reasonable estimate of the odds?

Let’s try. First, consider how many Civil War era Ancestors you have. You’ve got two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, etc. Let’s put approximate dates on those (or use your actual, correct dates if you have them). That gives two parents - born around 1950, and using 25 years for a generation, we end up with 32 Ancestors born ~1850, and 64 born ~ 1825. Also, remember that in a group that large, you’ll have plenty of cases where both father and son fall into the eligible age (18 to 45 years old), and plenty of cases where a boy at 16 lied about his age so as to fight. So for most of us, you have between ~40 and ~80 Ancestors who were between the ages of 18 and 45 in the year 1860, giving 20 to 40 male Ancestors – potential Civil War soldiers. I’ll call them Male Civil War Ancestors, or MCWAs.

But were any of them soldiers? How can we estimate that? Luckily, we have data!

Of men aged 20-40 in 1860, around 50% in the Union and an unbelievable 80+% in the Confederacy1 went off to fight. Some basic probability calculations2 using these data show that if you are a Caucasian3 person without nearly all of your family having immigrated4 here since 1865, it ispractically certain2 that you are descended from one or likely more, Civil War veterans. This is true for both people with purely Yankee ancestry, and even more certain for those with some Ancestors from the Confederate States.

As the math gave this answer and reality sunk in, I was amazed. For nearly all of us, we are the children of many Billy Yanks, many Johnny Rebs! Then, I thought of what it was like for our Ancestors to live in the American Civil War, whether slave or free. Hold that in your mind for a moment. Try running a google image search on, say, “civil war battle”, or if you’re brave, “civil war POW”. Plus, the soldiers (about 20% of who died) of course weren’t the only ones who suffered. For most of us, our great-great-great grandma Mary had to be told as a young child that daddy would never come home, or as a lovestruck 22 year old, that her beloved new husband George was gone forever, and that she’d have to raise baby Anne (you great-great-great-great grandma) alone. Yet they grew up, swallowed their pain, and raised your great-great-grandparents. Within a couple generations, that pain was forgotten. Those and many other powerful stories are as real as our lives today, even though the details have been lost in the mists of time. You exist today because, through love and struggle, they survived, and in most cases, gave their kids the best life they could.

We too easily forget that we stand on a mountain of love and struggle from thousands of loving Ancestors, who often gave their whole lives of hardship just to make it by. Because we don’t know the details, we forget that those lives existed. For me, an awareness of those lives fills me with gratitude every day for all I am and all I have. It lifts me up when faced with hardship, reminding me that I come from a long line of success stories, filled with noble Ancestors who faced down hardships at least as severe as whatever I’m facing today in this recession, who persevered again and again. As the Civil War plays out in 150thAnniversaries over the next four years, each one will be a new reminder to me of the struggles of some of my Ancestors. Along with thoughts of my trillions of other Ancestors, these will continue to be a source of strength and gratitude. Will you remember them on July 21st? Bull Run - July 21, Wilson Creek - August 10, Fort Donelson - February 16 the next year, Shiloh - April 6, 2nd Bull Run – August 29, Antietam – September 17th…… and more…

~ Jon Cleland Host

Footnotes:

1. To estimate the likelihood of a MCWA actually being a soldier, simply divide the size of the Union and Confederate armies (~ 2 and 1 million respectively) by the number of males ages 18 – 45. Estimates of the number of males ages 18 – 45 in 1861 are around 3.8 million for the Union (3.5 million white + 3 million African American), for about 2/3.8 or a ~50% Union enlistment rate, and around 1 million males ages 18 – 45 in 1861 for the Confederacy, giving a Confederate enlistment rate conservatively well over 80%. -Data from: U.S. Civil War: 150th Anniversary Reference Guide, compiled by Bill Lucey, using ``The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac: 1861-1865’’ By E. B. Long (Doubleday & Company Inc., 1971); ``Historical Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War’’ (Harper & Row, Publishers); ``Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era’’ By James McPherson., http://www.billlucey.com/2011/01/us-civil-war-150th-anniversary-reference-guide.html, Accessed 2011.06.28

2. Let’s use those data to estimate the probability that you have Ancestors who fought in the U. S. Civil War. Did your Ancestors live in the Union states in 1861? Since 50% of soldier age males from the Union fought, that means that for each of your Yankee MCWAs, there is only a 50% chance that he wasn’t a soldier. The odds that NONE of all of your Yankee MCWAs fought in the Civil War is therefore simply 0.5 raised to the power of the number of your MCWAs. Now, look at how fast that drops to near zero: 0.5^6 = 0.016, so even if, due to immigration or such3, you estimate that you have only 6 MCWAs, you still have a 98.4% chance (that’s [1-0.016] X 100%) of being descended from one or more Civil War veterans. With 17 or more MCWAs, as nearly all of us have, your odds, even using only Yankee MCWAs, of being descended from one or more Civil War veterans are 99.999+%.

Are any of your ancestral families from the South? In the South, slavery allowed more households to survive with the white men leaving to fight, so over 80% of soldier-aged white men fought1. Using the same math as above, the numbers are truly astounding – with just 2 Rebel MCWAs, you have more than a 96% chance (or [1-0.2^2] X 100), and with just 8 Rebel MCWAs (most Southerners have many more than that), you get a 99.9997% chance of being descended from one or more Civil War veterans.

2. “But hold on!” you say – “I’ve got some recent immigrants in my family tree! Don’t we have to remove them from the MCWA calculation?” Yep. Do so. Let’s say that someone as recent as your great-grandmother came over from Estonia in 1920. Your great-grandmother is 1/8th of your lineage at her generation, so that removes 1/8 of your 40 to 80 Civil War era Ancestors, leaving ~17 to 35 MCWAs. You can do the same for any part of your family tree made of post-1865 immigrants. More importantly, the lives of those immigrants were hardly walks in the park. They had the courage to leave the only home they knew, to get on that boat, and face an uncertain future as a mistrusted minority in America. Why would they do that? A potato famine? War? Starvation? Ethnic “cleansing”? Some of my Ancestors too are more recent immigrants, and their success in that brave move also fills me with appreciation and fits the last paragraph of the blog post above.

3. What about African Americans? In the North in 1860, free African Americans composed a full 10% of the population, and rushed to join the fight at rates similar to Caucasians, so if you are African American with at least some Northern heritage, the Yankee odds above apply equally to you. However, the Confederacy was deathly opposed to allowing slaves to fight, and never did (though out of desperation it was considered in 1865). So if all of your ancestry is from purely Southern U. S. African Americans, then you likely don’t have any Civil War veteran Ancestors. Nevertheless, being that people move and intermarry, it will not be long before nearly everyone in the United States has Civil War veteran ancestors, including African-Americans living in the South. More importantly, the life of a slave was often a harder life than even that of a soldier, so the main point of this blog post, as described in the last paragraph, is even more powerful for descendants of Civil War slaves than for Civil War veterans.

Plume paperback with new preface!

» Endorsements from 6 Nobel laureates
» Praise from other science luminaries
» Responses from diverse religious leaders
» Purchase softcover online for $10.88

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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• Free sample pages (Table of Contents, Preface, Promises, Prologue, Introduction, and Chapter 1)

» Purchase softcover online for $10.88

Stuart Davis talks with Michael Dowd on Integral Life

by Corey deVos

Michael Dowd, celebrated author of the book Thank God for Evolution, talks with Stuart Davis about his own journey from religious fundamentalism to evolutionary spirituality, the contours of his evolutionary approach, his relationship with his wife and teaching partner Connie, his response to the New Atheist movement, and his hopes about the future of evolution on this planet. He and Stuart also discuss the secret to Michael's conciliatory approach to teaching, which has enabled him to speak amicably with both religious fundamentalists and scientific materialists alike, while helping to build conceptual and relational bridges to cross the gap between science and spirituality.

"I certainly think that the new atheists are providing a tremendous service at one level. They are critiquing and attacking mythic, other-worldly, supernatural religion. And I think that is one thing that needs to be done in the world at this time. It's certainly not the only thing, and I'm glad they're doing what they're doing and I'm playing a different role in the Body of Life. I'm glad that the creationists are playing their role in the Body of Life! It's certainly not a role I want to be playing—but you know, I wouldn't want my anal sphincter cells and my heart cells to be doing the same thing! I found that the Integral model helped me to formulate a way of holding the whole, a way of holding diversity that allows me to say 'yes' to the role that other people are playing in the Body of Life, but also differentiating passionately...."

Listen free...

The Future of Religion

by Jon Cleland-Host

One of the many empowering realizations that an evolutionary worldview gives us is that we can make some reasonable guesses about the future based on long term trends of the past.  We can enter the future with trust and with our eyes open, poised for some likely scenarios, instead of being blindly buffeted by inscrutable Fates.  In chapters 16 and 17 of Thank God for Evolution, Michael Dowd shows that if the 14 billion year history of the universe were compressed into a single century, then the next minute on the cosmic century timeline would represent 250 years. Surely, we should be able to make a few accurate assumptions about the next minute if we know the past 100 years of history!

Some events can't be predicted very well, such as distant supernovae or the direction of next week's stock market movement.   Others, however, are the result of long-term trends, and can at least be estimated based on those trends.  For instance, world population has been increasing rapidly for centuries, and it appears likely to continue to do so for several decades into the future.  When our day-to-day experience is affected by long-term trends, those trends can predict part of what our future (and our kids' future) will be like.  Out of all the aspects of society that affect our lives, let's look at religion.

If you are an American Gen X'er like me, you probably grew up in a world where the dominant religion was an unquestioned, moderate, mainline (Protestant or Roman Catholic) Christianity.  I remember some religious conflict in society (such as the fight over female ministers), but also remember times without conflict.  How much should I trust those memories of mine?

Anecdotal evidence (the memories and experiences of one or several people) is naturally a powerful force in our evolved minds.  After all, it's the only kind of evidence that our Ancestors had available for well over 99.9% of our existence.  It makes sense that we have evolved to pay a lot of attention to it.  However, our experiences are terribly limited, our recall quite selective, and our memories malleable by desire and expectation.  This is why anecdotal evidence is often not worth the paper it is (sometimes) printed on, and why it takes a conscious effort for us to go beyond it.

Luckily, the modern world often gives us powerful and effective supplements to anecdotal evidence.  The 20th century, unlike any century before it, generated a wealth of detailed data on an astounding array of subjects.  To ignore this evidence when looking into any subject is like driving with your eyes closed.  It's stupid, pointless, and often harmful.  So let's look at some recent religious trends...

The First Measured Century, by T. Caplow shows us some of these data, while many other studies provide additional data.  Since 1900, moderate Christian denominations, like the Episcopal Church, have been shrinking, while more fundamentalist groups, like the Pentecostals, have been growing.  Even though this growth has been going on for a long time, in comparison to moderate-to-liberal Christianity, mainline Christians were still the overwhelming majority until recently.  Now, even evangelicalism is in serious decline in America.  For more about this, read the provocative and much discussed recent article in the Christian Science Moniter: "The Coming Evangelical Collapse", written by Michael Spencer, a well-respected evangelical blogger.)  The last two decades have also seen an increase of the "non-religious": Agnostics, Atheists, and a resurgence of Deists.

The recent data from the ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) just published on March 9th confirms that these trends are continuing today.  For instance, this survey found that the non-religious continue to increase, now reaching 15%, up from just 8% in 1990.  Similarly, the proportion of Christians in the U. S. continues to decrease, down to 76% from 86% in 1990 and 93% in 1965 (Rasmussen data).  Minority religions experienced growth of over 10% per decade, from 3.3% in 1990 to 3.9% in 2008.  However, the biggest shock was the drop in the mainline, moderate, Protestant Christian faiths that defined much of American culture for so long.   Nearly 20% of Americans were mainline Protestants in 1990, 17% in 2001, and just 12.9% in 2008.  Perhaps most importantly, the young are the least likely to identify with mainline Protestant Christianity.  We've also seen an explosive growth of "ex-Catholics"

So what does this tell us about our future?  Because these trends have been going on for decades or centuries (depending on the trend), it seems likely that they will continue.  It seems hard for many of us to imagine a United States where Christianity is a minority religion, yet that appears likely within the lifetimes of many of us.  The remaining Christians will be mostly fundamentalists.  Religious diversity will be the norm, with large proportions of the non-religious and increased Muslim, Hindu, and other populations.  Can you imagine a future world where many people haven't even heard of tiny sects like Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and Baptists?  How can we imagine such a radically different religious landscape?

One easy way is to simply look across the pond to Europe, where these same trends are farther along.  Like the probable future United States, Europe currently has growing minority religions, a shrinking Christianity, and a large Non-Christian (or Post-Christian) population.  This can be seen in the 2005 Eurobarometer poll, which found that only 52% of Europeans believed in God, with even lower rates among the young.  Because the countries in Europe vary greatly in regard to religion, some countries show this much more than others.

Do we need more confirmation of these trends?  What is going in Australia, a third large chunk of western culture?   In 1901, Australians were over 95% Christian.  This dropped to 76% by 1981, and to 64% by 2006.  Minority religions are rapidly growing (and were at 5.6% in 2006), and the Non-Religious have grown from near zero in 1966 to between 20 and 30% in 2006, and are even higher among the young.

In all of these Western cultures, the highest numbers for both the non-religious and the minority religions are among the young, who will become the culture of the future in all these areas.  As a result, as the young grow up these trends will likely continue, in addition to any acceleration due to the cultural changes that are driving them from the start.  Confirmation of this comes from recent data on Canadian teens.  Compared to mid 80's, 30% fewer teens identify as Catholics, over 60% fewer teens identify as Protestants, and today there are more teens in Canada who identify as Muslims than as Protestant.  Over the same period, the number of professed Atheists among Canadian teens tripled.

These data certainly came as a shock to me.  They may come as a shock to you.  They no doubt would come as a major shock to the millions of Americans who wrap Christianity and America together in their minds.  In fact, a 2006 study found that in America, Atheists are more widely hated than any other studied group, including homosexuals, Muslims, and African Americans.  Unlike being homosexual, Muslim, or African American, simply being an Atheist disqualifies a person from being president of the United States in the minds of most Americans.  With the non-religious being second only to Christianity in numbers in the United States, it's no surprise that we've all seen the growing animosity on both sides of the God debates, as well as the escalation following the appearance of the New Atheists.  (See Connie Barlow's blog post: "A Place at the Podium")

Are these trends and the attitudes of millions of Christians (especially in the United States) on a collision course?  Is our near future and that of our kids going to be marred by hatred and conflict between Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and others?  As we've seen throughout history, few human differences can result in as much violence as differences over religion, such as when the religious wars of the Protestant Reformation killed literally millions of Europeans over the course of two centuries.  It is chilling to realize that most of the religious carnage that has occurred in recent centuries did so without the aid of nuclear and chemical weapons, which have since become a common addition to arsenals around the world.  What will religious conflict be like with them?

A tragic future is not, of course, inevitable.  An evolutionary worldview provides us with a way to call into being new interpretations of every religious (and non-religious) path, interpretations that are vibrant, healthy, living, and perhaps most important of all, harmonious.  As someone on the Evolutionary Paganism (Earth-honoring) path, I'm happy to see the growth of Evolutionary Christianity, Evolutionary Islam, and so on.  I happily promote Evolutionary Christianity among those whom it will fit.  I'm a Pagan promoting a form of Christianity?  Yes!  The evolutionary forms of religion really do fit together harmoniously, and they really do expand our circles of care and concern to embrace the whole planet.  This harmony is but one of the many gifts of the evolutionary expressions of each religious tradition.

What are these new, evolutionary forms of the venerable religious traditions?  They are simply the core religious concepts of each tradition, practiced in the light of the current discoveries of science and our evolutionary past and future in ways that inspire and empower.  They are discovered when those within each tradition translate their own religious metaphors and symbols to make them relevant, real, inspiring, and universally true.   This is nothing new.  All religious paths grew and changed as their adherents revitalized their religions again and again over time.  To see this happening today is evidence of a living faith that has not stagnated.  Michael Dowd goes through this process for Christianity in Section III of his book, Thank God For Evolution (and in the recent blog posts "Christian Naturalism" and "How and Why I'm a Pentecostal Evangelical").  Others have begun this process for other faith traditions.

Evolutionary forms of all religious paths also evaporate the conflict between believers in God and Atheists.  An evolutionary understanding of God is not something can be disbelieved in - the evolutionary God is as obviously and undeniably real as our own bodies.  This is discussed in detail in many previous blog posts here, such as "Metaphorical Gods vs. Reality: Part 1 and Part 2".  When evolutionary forms of religion and non-religion are adopted, the whole Atheist/Theist question becomes irrelevant, and we are all freed to celebrate our lives together, and freed to concentrate on the real problems of building a bright and sustainable future for our great great grandchildren.  (See Michael Dowd's blog posts: "Creatheism: Evolutionary Emergence Ends the Theism-Atheism Debate" and "The Silly Debate Over God's Existence."

The trends we are seeing today are moving faster than many of us realize.  As the past four billion years of life on our Earth has shown us, Evolutionary Emergence generally speeds up over time.  To keep our species from being caught unprepared for these changes, pioneers across the globe are helping to usher in the religious revival needed to prevent much of the future religious conflict before it happens.  The fact that traditional, flat-Earth religions are withering even without a clear competitor shows how needed all of these real, fulfilling evolutionary forms of spirituality are today.  In the West, perhaps the second most important evolutionary spirituality that must be built is that of a meaningful, purposeful, Evolutionary Humanism.  It is a path so poorly developed that the majority of Americans have never even heard of it, or its sister paths of Religious Naturalism and Neo-Pantheism.  Few attempts have been made at this important part of the Great Work of building our future culture - though some great beginnings do exist, such as the ongoing work by Connie Barlow and Ursula Goodenough.  In discussions with other people with a naturalistic worldview, I rarely hear more meaning and purpose than the banal nihilism of "we all just decompose eventually anyway".  The Great Story—the Epic of Evolution—can be a tremendous source of meaning and value for evolutionary forms of all religions, traditional and non-traditional, and for freethinkers as well.

We each make decisions every day that speed or slow the emergence of a just and thriving future for planet Earth and it's diverse species.  For the sake of your kids, and mine, I hope we are making decisions that will help us build this inclusive, evolutionary, science affirming culture sooner rather than later.

REFERENCES

All of the estimates of the religious landscape in any area are likely to change depending on the wording of the questions asked as well as methodological differences (such as whether or not children are included).  For this reason, sources are provided for all the numbers used in this blog post, and the reader is encouraged to check the data from various sources.  Some of the main sources used include:

The Cosmic Century (the 14 billion year history of the Universe condensed down to 100 years) is explained in greater detail starting on Page 277 in Thank God for Evolution, by Michael Dowd. A similar condensation (Earth's history condensed to a single year) can be seen in Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Episode 2.

The First Measured Century by Theodore Caplow is available in many bookstores, including online bookstores.

The entire ARIS 2008 Survey is available as a free download, which also contains a summary.

Pre-1990 data on the proportion of Christians in the US can be found here.

Detailed statistics on the explosive growth of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity can be found in "Spirit and Power—a 10 Country Survey of Pentecostals" by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 2006.

The Entire 2005 Eurobarometer poll can be downloaded here.  Note that the poll allows for the selection of "some universal spirit or life force" instead of "God", however, being the question being address was the prevalence of Christianity, only belief in "God" was considered so as to separate Christians from those with a more Deistic or New Age view of divinity.

Data on the religious landscape in Australia give slightly different numbers depending on the source. The approximately 30% non-religious estimate is from Flinders Social monitor (Gladigau K., West, Dr B., Flinders Social Monitor, No. 8, April 2007 (ISSN 1834-3783), while the 20% non-religious estimate is from the Australian Census Bureau, and can be accessed here.

Data on the beliefs of Canadian teens is available HERE.

Poll data on hatred in the United States toward Atheists can be found in Penny Edgell; Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann (April 2006). "Atheists As 'Other': Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society". American Sociological Review 71 (2): 218.

From Mystery to Wonder: Science vs. God of the Gaps

by Connie Barlow

"Science cannot explain the origin of life," a man told me as I managed the book table at my husband's evening program recently.  The man had been explaining how he had come to accept evolution while maintaining his belief in God.  Then a younger man entered the conversation, warning, "But science may one day crack that mystery, too." I concurred, "A God of the Gaps is a dangerous approach for resolving science and faith."

Michael's program that evening (23 March 2009) was his newest illustrated talk, "Evolution and the Global Integrity Crisis", which he also will also be presenting at the United Nations.  We were at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church near Philadelphia.  The event drew an audience from the surrounding Philadelphia community.  It was co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia, Metanexus Institute, Narbarth Havurah, Church of the Redeemer, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, St. Luke United Methodist Church, and The Earth Center of the Delaware Watershed.

In order to make time for the global integrity theme in his new program, Michael had dropped some of the theology that he ordinarily presents (and that entails a large chunk of his book, Thank God for Evolution).  Specifically, he had excised the arguments leading up to a bold assertion: "An understanding of God that does not at least include the entire creative process of the Universe is, given our modern understandings, a trivial notion of God."  Alas, absent this perspective, moderate Christians will have little option but to continue taking refuge in today's version of "God of the Gaps" theology—that is, Intelligent Design.

Just how secure is the mystery of life's origin?

Is this argument in favor of a designer God well fortified from possible intrusions by explanatory science?  That is, how great are the gaps in scientific understanding of (a) the formation of complex organic molecules on or within the early Earth, and (b) natural and unguided processes for linking up such molecules into precursors of living systems?

A stunning gain in understanding the formation of complex organic molecules was reported in December 2008 - and not just in the science media: Nature Geoscience.  USA Today also printed an article titled "Life from Asteroid Collisions?".  A team of Japanese scientists performed experiments that simulated (in miniature) the chemical conditions of Earth's early atmosphere and ocean during the time of the late "Heavy Bombardment" of asteroids in Earth's pre-life history.  The heat and shock of such impacts would have destroyed any complex organic molecules in the vicinity of the impact, but the subsequent fallout of materials raining down through the atmosphere over a vast area would have generated far more complex molecules in the process—molecules that would persist in the chemical conditions of Earth's early ocean.

In 1997, as a freelance science writer, I was privileged to help a brilliant scientist write his final book.  The education I gained in his presence opened my eyes to the prospects of an eventual solution to the mysteries of life's origins.  The scientist was Thomas Gold (1920-2004), and the book is titled, The Deep Hot Biosphere.  Back in 1992 Gold had published a scientific paper by this same title (now available online here), and it had entranced me from the outset.  The origins of life ideas he presents in his final book include a speculation that he made in one of the interviews I taped of him, but which he hadn't yet published.  Knowing that this book would be the only place that particular idea would appear, I made sure to work it in.  The gist is this: So long as scientists go about their work as "surface chauvinists"—that is, assuming that the best conditions for life to originate would be at or near Earth's surface, they will fail to experimentally test chemical interactions under conditions of exceedingly high pressures.  Gold hypothesized that catalytic organic molecules (organo-metallics) may actually originate easily and in abundance by natural processes operating at depth within Earth's upper mantle.

Time will tell.  Meanwhile, may secularists and religionists alike find awe and a sense of the sacred in not just the unknown mysteries of the universe, but the known wonders—the workings of which simply could not have been perceived, much less understood, in the time of the biblical writers.  Thank God for evolution—and thank God for the scientific endeavor that consistently works toward filling mysterious gaps with known wonders!

United Nations Values Caucus welcomes Michael Dowd

by Michael Dowd
In the Spring of 2009, I had the honor and delight of presenting my program, Evolution and the Global Integrity Crisis, at the United Nations, in New York City. The event, sponsored by The Values Caucus at the United Nations, was attended by 40 people representing a wide diversity of religious, political, and philosophical worldviews. (See event flier and photo essay.) My program was very well received and afterwards several members of the Values Caucus began talking about the possibility of inviting me back to speak to a much larger audience at the United Nations. Naturally, I told them that I would be thrilled to do so. Here is what I offered:

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: From crumbling economies to collapsing ecosystems, humanity is experiencing an unprecedented global integrity crisis. In a richly illustrated presentation, Michael Dowd proposes that the lack of an evolutionary worldview made the current crisis inevitable and that a deep-time view of human nature, values, and social systems provides a clear and inspiring way forward.

A few days after the event, Anne Creter, one of the organizers, sent me this touching note:

Dear Michael: On behalf of the Values Caucus at the United Nations, please accept our heartfelt appreciation for sharing your brilliant, rousing, thought-provoking and awe-inspiring April 2 presentation on “Evolution and the Global Integrity Crisis” with us. We were honored to be the first to introduce you at the UN, a place which needs to (and hopefully will) hear much more of your message. You really captivated us with your masterful insight and articulation of the complexities of the universe that puts it all in such a hopeful, uplifting perspective in these troubled times. We received an overabundance of praise of you and your material. Thank you and Connie for all the effort you put into making this such a grand UN event.