Traditional Religion's God Problem

by Michael Dowd

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

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

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

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Integrity: An Invitation to Religious Leaders

by Michael Dowd

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

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

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

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

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

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Free Chapter

by Editors

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

Thank GOD for EVOLUTION brings together believers and non-believers on both sides of the generations-old debate by showing how evolution is not meaningless blind chance; rather, it is the sacred story that embraces and includes all religions. As a Christian minister, Dowd addresses the concerns that many Christians have about evolution and offers insights that ring true to people of any spiritual tradition, or none at all.

For Dowd, “studying evolution is like following cosmic breadcrumbs home.” Drawing on the full range of cosmological, geological, biological, and human-related sciences, Thank GOD for EVOLUTION presents the history of the universe as an epic drama in which the generations alive today have a crucial role to play. It offers a shift in public perception on a scale not experienced since the Copernican Revolution or the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. By acknowledging the global, collaborative scientific endeavor as public revelation, we can newly appreciate the timeless insights within the private revelations of the world’s enduring religious traditions.

Moreover, Dowd shows how the discoveries of science—notably, evolutionary brain science and evolutionary psychology—offer astonishing gifts for understanding and overcoming the challenges in our personal lives and relationships. This, he declares is “the gospel according to evolution.”

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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: ------

How and Why I'm a Pentecostal Evangelical

by Michael Dowd

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

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

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

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

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Responses to TGFE from Religious Leaders

A meta-religious movement is underway...

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

The Great Story/Big History: "To Educate the Human Potential"

by Michael Dowd

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

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

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

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