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Michael Dowd

American Christian writer

Michael Dowd (born November 19, 1958) is an American progressive Christian minister, author, and eco-theologian known as an advocate of Big History, religious naturalism, sustainability, climate activism, and the epic of evolution.

Michael Dowd (~2015)

Quotes

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  • I wrote Thank God for Evolution! mostly to help religious believers from different traditions move toward an evidential worldview without having to abandon their tradition and join the atheist/humanist camp to do so. ...Few things are more important... than for... of religious believers... to embrace a science-based understanding of the world. ...Trying to understand reality without an evolutionary worldview is like trying to understand infection without microscopes or the structure of the universe without telescopes. It's... impossible.

Thank God for evolution! (2007)

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: How the Marriage of Science and Religion will Transform Your Life and Our World
  • I dedicate this book to the glory of God.
    • Footnote: Not any "God" we may think about, believe in, or deny, but the one true God we all know and experience.
  • I promise that this book will provide... an experience of science, and evolution specifically, that will fire your imagination, touch your heart, and lead you to a place of deep gratitude, awe, and reverence.
  • To agnostics, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers... you will find nothing here that you cannot wholeheartedly embrace as... rationally sound, mainstream scientific understanding of the Universe. ...[T]he vision of "evolutionary spirituality" presented here will benefit you and your loved ones without your needing to believe in anything otherworldly.
  • Discussing Thank God for Evolution! with those you care about will open new doors of possibility... and provide common ground where none existed before. This book is a perfect gift, not to convert others to your way of thinking but to converse... deeply and heartfully about those things that matter most.
  • I met Connie Barlow at a lecture... Connie was the author of four books, and two of them had "evolution" in their titles... She, too, was a long-time "epic of evolution" enthusiast. ...[H]er passion for sharing a sacred understanding of cosmic history was no less than mine. Seven months later I asked Connie to marry me.
  • Connie was a self-described atheist, and her professional life was steeped in the sciences. My life was devoted to religion. Our union embraces both.
  • [W]e were watching... Evolution: A Journey into Where We Came From and Where We're Going. ...episode ..."What About God?" It examined the struggle that conservative Christian college students face in trying to embrace both evolution and a pre-evolutionary interpretation of their faith. ...Connie ...said, "You need to be out there talking to those students. ...to show how an evolutionary understanding can enrich one's faith!" ...A few weeks later, after a frustrating day at work, I told her (not really serious...) "...I wish we could travel non-stop, teaching and preaching the Great Story ..." Her response... "I'd love to do that!"
  • [W]e chose to display on our van both a Jesus fish and a Darwin fish—kissing. A retired biology professor... laughed, "Oh great! Now you piss everyone off!"
  • God's gift of science reveals that our faith traditions are... meaningful and grounded in undeniable reality... When we focus... on points of broad consensus rather than... legitimate disagreement, conflicts... lose their grip.
  • [T]he fact that our Universe has been transforming along a discernible path for billions of years—the fact that creation was not a one-time event—is of little or no dispute. ...[T]his undeniable fact ...makes me want to shout from the mountaintops: "...The war is over!"
  • Traditional religions have played crucial roles in fostering cooperation within each tribe, kingdom, and early nation—though not infrequently by provoking suspicion and enmity of those outside the group. ...[T]o fulfill their potentials in our postmodern world, each will have to harmonize its core doctrines with the evolutionary world view. ...[T]he evolutionary outlook bolsters their core teachings. Instead of an intrusion... a precious blessing.
  • Evolutionary versions of each religion... are emerging. ...[A]dherents of each religion have discovered ...Religious insights and perspectives freed from the narrowness of their time and place of origin are more comprehensive and grounded in measurable reality ...Evolution does not diminish religion; it expands its meaning and value globally.
  • [M]any... believers have rejected evolution because... [it] has been depicted as random, meaningless, mechanistic, and Godless. The growing edge of evolutionary thinking... points to a very different understanding... a... realistic picture of divine creativity. ...a Universe astonishingly ...suited for life and ...consciousness.
  • Scientists... are moving away from a mechanistic... way of thinking and into an emergent, developmental worldview. Evolution... can be embraced as God glorifying and Christ edifying.
  • The ancient religious paths are aching for coherence with the great discoveries born of the quest to understand this... Universe, the living world, our evolved selves, and... our innermost psyches.
  • [M]y intent is to help you see what I see—science and religion can be mutually enriching.
  • [F]or... over 99 percent of human history—there is little evidence that any culture understood developmental time and space... remotely similar to... today. Nevertheless, the big cosmological questions demanded answers, and so the answers came. ...Orally transmitted stories would evolve—until (and if!) they were written down and declared to be the unchanging revelation of God. When a story becomes scripture, it ceases to evolve.
  • [W]hat a difference it makes to be groping our way forward in faith—in partnership with God, or, should you prefer less traditional terminology: trusting the Universe... Reality... Time.
  • So long as religious and political leaders continue to ignore our evolutionary heritage, and thus do not put in place structures of internal and external support that can withstand the high dosages of testosterone that high status and power necessarily confer, then there will be no hope for a less calamitous future.
  • Understanding the unwanted drives within us as having served our ancestors for millions of years is far more empowering than imagining that we are the way we are because of inner demons, or because the world’s first woman and man ate a forbidden apple a few thousand years ago. The path to freedom lies in appreciating one’s instincts, while taking steps to channel these powerful energies in ways that will serve our higher purposes.
  • No otherworldly, unnatural paradise can compare with the utterly REAL heaven I now experience... every moment of every day, free of resentment, guilt, and unfinished business. ...By genuinely appreciating my instincts—thanks to the evolutionary world-view—and creating... structures of support, I now, by grace, experience an ease and freedom I've never known before regarding old habits, patterns, and temptations.
  • [L]et me slip into pride or arrogance, deception or inauthenticity, blame or resentment, or stingy, ungrateful self-centeredness, and I won't have to worry about burning in some otherworldly hell after I die. I'll be supping with Satan right here and now.
  • May I continue to have the humility, strength, and peer encouragement to do what is necessary to remain in this state of grace. May I be a blessing to those around me. May I leave a positive evolutionary legacy, in service to God. And may the light of the living Christ shine within my heart and continue to guide my steps.
  • Each and every human being who has ever brought anything of beauty, value, or importance into the world has done so only because... impregnated or in-spirited by some aspect of Beauty, Truth, Love, or other attributes of God. This... is beyond comprehension, beyond... force or free will. ...as if some power greater than ourselves is at work. ...There is a sense of having served, like Mary, as a vessel for something ...greater than our own capacities. ...[P]eak experiences are religious moments ...The story of Jesus's conception can remind us of such miracles in our ...lives.
  • Thanks to our fresh understanding of the deep-time face of grace, science and religion... are ushering each other into greatness.

Hopium Dealers Hall of Fame (2022)

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(with a Nod to Guy McPherson) a YouTube video (Aug 2022)
  • Denial gets a bad wrap, because denial is instinctual.
  • Denial is the largely unconscious habit of thought whereby we refuse to accept the reality of things that are bad or upsetting—or that challenge our world view, our legacy, how we live, what is required of us, and/or our feelings of self-worth or superiority.
  • Denial is also the instinctual impulse to reject or discount information that calls into question our hopes, assumptions, or expectations about the future.
  • We all have denial instincts... so we... can have compassion for ourselves and for each other... [D]enial often gets a bad wrap. It's often just adaptive inattention.
  • The stability of the biosphere has been in decline for centuries and in unstoppable collapse for decades. This "Great Acceleration" of technology and market-driven ecocide is an easily verifiable fact... [A]ll you have to do is Google "Great Acceleration."
  • Evidence is also compelling that the vast majority... will deny this, especially those benefiting from the existing order, those legitimately concerned about the consequences of collapse, and those who fear that accepting reality means "giving up." ...Virtually all of us fit that paragraph ...
  • The history of more than 80 previous boom and bust societies... reveals how and why Homo colossus is destined for near-term extinction.
    • Homo colossus Ref: William R. Catton Jr., Overshoot: the Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change p. 170.
  • Homo colossus is Willam Catton's term for "industrial" humanity. That's where each of us uses 20-50 times the resources, and exudes 20-50 times the waste as Homo sapiens.
  • [P]aradoxically, "hope-free" collapse acceptance may be the only thing that can help us not make a bad situation worse—and live fully, fearlessly, and deeply meaningfully, even at TEOTWAWKI.
  • Collapse is when a gradual downward trend in biophysical health and wellbeing goes into unstoppable decline; runaway, out of control; etc., it's... abrupt climate change... like 10,000 years of climate change in half a human lifetime. ...This is known as "The Great Acceleration" of Biospheric Collapse.
  • At any measuere, absolutely everything that humans rely on... is now in precipitous free fall, unstoppable.
  • [I]f you Google "Great Acceleration" you see all these wonderful charts... socioeconomic trends and earth system trends... everything going up. ...[W]e naturally think going up means better. Oh no, because the things... are ecocidal trends... and earth system collapse measures [respectively].
  • [S]ocioeconomic trends: population, motor vehicles, fertilizer constumption, tourism, river dams, etc., ...are the drivers of biosphere collapse. ...These are ecodidal trends and... earth system collapse trends.
  • The biosphere's health has been in decline for one or two centuries, and in runaway collapse... for decades... The Great Acceleration of Gaian Collapse.
  • [W]e are now in a mass extinction... [T]here's only been one mass extinction in the past that we've lost the insects and the forest, and we're now adding carbon dioxide, methane and notrous oxide faster than then...
  • [H]opium is a comforting vision of the future that requires breaking the laws of physics, biology or ecology, such as thinking that we can slow, stop or reverse The Great Acceleration of Gaian Collapse.
  • Unstoppable collapse... These extinction level tipping points... thresholds that are already in the rear view mirror. Loss of the world's ice... I consider Dahr Jamail's The End of Ice... my favorite book on climate change. If you only read one book on climate change this year, read that...
    • Refs: Henry Pollack, A World Without Ice (2010); Peter Wadhams, A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic (2017); Dahr Jamail, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption (2019)
  • When most of the ice is gone, the serious global warming begins. ...[L]earn about phase change and latent heat... [W]hen you've got a glass of water, as long as the ice is in there, even if the sun's beating on it, it stays at 32°. Once the ice is gone the temperature goes skyrocketing!

Quotes about Dowd

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  • Much insight and wisdom has been assembled in these pages. Take what you like and leave the rest, as the saying goes. And there is a lot to like, much to learn, experiments to be modified and adapted, and a refreshingly creative attempt to take the drama of the constructive engagement of religion and science from the Ivory Towers into the popular culture.
  • The message is laid out in Dowd’s book, "Thank God for Evolution"... Dowd presents evolution as a sacred epic of emerging complexity that can be seen as "14 billion years of grace." He sidesteps the question of whose grace... although the book’s title offers a hint. ...[H]e’s not talking about an intelligent designer. Instead, he exhorts his audience to supplant or complement their individual notions of God with sometimes-fuzzy concepts like “cosmic creativity.”

See also

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