Reverend Michael Dowd Preaches The Wonders of Evolution

[Guest guest]

Reverend Michael Dowd preaches the wonders of

evolution

 

Source >

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/04/25/findrelig.DT\

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David Ian Miller, Special to SF Gate

 

Monday, April 25, 2005

 

 

The evolution-versus-creationism debate is one of

those perennial hot-button issues, like abortion and

school prayer, that almost invariably leads to

polarization. It seems as if you either think there's

a place for teaching a biblical perspective in the

schools, as many fundamentalist Christians contend, or

you believe evolution, grounded in scientific fact, is

the only paradigm worth exploring.

 

Michael Dowd is an itinerant preacher who believes he

has found a middle path that transcends and includes

both camps. For the past three years, Dowd, a

nondenominational Christian minister, and his wife,

science writer Connie Barlow, have been driving across

the country, stopping at Christian and Unitarian

Universalist churches, Jewish synagogues, Quaker

meeting houses and Buddhist meditation centers to

teach religious audiences about evolution. Their goal

is to present a story of the universe, which they call

the " great story, " in a way that people -- whatever

their spiritual orientation -- can embrace.

 

Dowd spoke with me on Friday from Sonoita, Ariz.,

where he stopped for a few days before hitting the

road again. He'll be in Los Angeles later this week.

You're an itinerant preacher. Where do you actually

live?

 

For the last three years, my wife and I have lived all

over North America. We don't have a home. We don't

have a storage bin. We don't even have an RV -- we've

got a van. So we stay in people's homes while we're

teaching and preaching.

 

What's it like being on the road all the time?

 

We stay with amazing people. Most of them are

committed to a just, healthy, sustainable world, and

so we learn from them and share what we learn from

others. Often, they introduce us to their favorite

places in nature -- waterfalls, meadows, streams, what

have you. You wouldn't know about these places unless

someone local gave you directions.

 

You're teaching about evolution in churches, which is

kind of a radical concept. According to a Gallup poll

from November, more than a third of Americans believe

in the story of creation found in the Bible. Why would

they listen to you?

 

The reason many conservatives reject evolution is that

they've never been exposed to a way of thinking about

it that makes sense and validates their spiritual

insights. But one of my basic beliefs is that the

person with the best story wins. So, when I speak to

religious conservatives, the first thing I say is,

" You're absolutely right to have rejected evolution. "

Because the only version of evolution that most of us

have been exposed to is a chance, meaningless,

purposeless, mechanistic process.

 

That's not a version I'm talking about. What I say to

them is, " If you'll allow me to, what I'd love to do

is share with you a God-glorifying, sacred

understanding of evolution. " And, at that point, they

let me speak.

 

What, in your view, makes evolution sacred?

 

Evolution is sacred when it's told in a way that

edifies traditional religious traditions yet also

stretches them to a new place. I see the entire 14

billion-year story of the universe as the story of

God's creativity. It's the story of God's love, of

God's grace. I mean, which makes more sense -- that

God would have stopped communicating truth that is

vital to our well being and destiny 2,000 years ago

when people thought the world was flat or that God

[has] continued speaking all along? When the Bible

speaks about God forming us from the dust of the

ground, and breathing into us the breath of life,

that's a true story. It matches what science is

telling us.

 

As [cosmologist] Brian Swimme says, " Four billion

years ago, the Earth was molten rock, and now it sings

opera. " But rather than believing that the really

important revelations from God happened 2,000 years

ago, I believe that God's revelations are happening

all the time and will continue to happen. That's the

sacred story of evolution.

 

Other than the Bible, how else do you think those

revelations are communicated?

 

The primary way that God has always communicated is

through feelings, circumstances and relationships. God

uses whatever technologies and communication tools we

have at any given moment. Before there was written

language, people communicated through stories. So God

communicated with humans through stories, rituals and

rites of passage. When writing came into existence,

God could then inspire people to write things down.

And when science developed as a way of organizing

written language, then God was able to use science to

communicate.

 

What do you think God is?

 

When I use the word God, what I'm referring to is the

whole of reality -- seen and unseen, transcendent and

immanent, measurable and nonmeasurable. An analogy

that I often use is nesting dolls -- you know, the

Russian nesting dolls?

 

That's a small doll that fits inside a larger doll

inside of an even larger doll, and so on?

 

Yeah. There's a fundamental truth about the nature of

the universe, about reality itself, which is like

these nesting dolls.

 

What view is this?

 

It's the idea that reality consists of nested forms of

creativity and intelligence. That is, we have

subatomic particles within atoms, atoms within

molecules, molecules within cells, cells within

organisms, organisms within planets, planets within

galaxies. And, at every level, there is an

intelligence that the other levels don't have access

to. I mean, no matter how smart my kidney cells get,

they're never going to fully comprehend the wisdom and

intelligence of my body, because they're a part of it.

 

What does that have to do with God?

 

If this idea of nested intelligence is a fundamental

truth that we can agree on, then what shall we name

the ultimate reality, the only form of intelligence

that's not a subset of some larger reality or

creativity? Traditional names for that ultimate

reality have been the Goddess, or God, or Allah, or,

as the Greeks refer to it, Kosmos. We realize that we

have different names and understandings of this

ultimate reality because we're a subset of it.

 

How does science fit into that view?

 

If God is a sacred name for the whole of reality, then

scientists are empirical theologians -- that is,

everything we learn about the nature of reality, we're

learning something about the divine.

 

I want to ask you about your own personal story. For a

while, you were an anti-evolutionary fundamentalist.

How did that happen?

 

I was raised a Catholic but then had a born-again

experience when I was a teenager, and that's when I

became a fundamentalist. I would stand outside where

people were teaching about evolution and pass out

pamphlets. I used to argue with anybody who thought

the world was more than 6,000 years old.

 

What changed your view?

 

I embraced evolution for two reasons. One was that

most of the faculty at Evangel University, a Christian

school where I was a student, believed in evolution.

So I couldn't write them off as being demonically

possessed. I mean, these were very godly men and

women. Another reason was that I met a Buddhist

Christian who became my teacher. He literally was the

most Christ-like man I've ever encountered. And yet

his theology was so liberal. My theology said that he

was going to hell, and that I should get him saved,

but my heart said, " Ask him to mentor you. " So my

world expanded. I ended up pastoring three churches

over about a decade.

 

And while I was at my first church, I was introduced

to the work of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. They

wrote the book " The Universe Story, " which provides a

big-picture history of the cosmos that bridges the gap

between science, religion and the humanities. The

first night that I heard their message, about 45

minutes to an hour into the program, I had goose bumps

up and down my arms, I started to cry and I realized,

" Oh, my God, this is what I'm going to spend the rest

of my life doing, popularizing this perspective. "

 

After that, I started waking up at 4 a.m. and studying

cosmology, biology and evolution, and learning more

about how to tell the universe story in a way that

reached people.

 

If you look at what's going on in this country right

now, you see fundamentalists working very hard to keep

the study of evolution out of the classroom. Does that

concern you?

 

Not really. I see this as normal -- to me, it's right

on schedule. Right now, the way evolution is being

taught is not meaningful. It's part of the

disconnected set of raw scientific facts that don't

show people how evolution can connect with their God

concepts, with their religion.

 

Do I wish that creationism be taught in school? No,

absolutely not. But it feels like a natural growth

process that is going to swing back the other way.

We're seeing a conservative backlash, which just

completely makes sense to me, given where we are

evolutionarily. When you look at the history of

evolution, you realize it is constantly filled with

setbacks. The things that drive evolutionary

creativity and transformation are chaos, breakdowns

and bad news.

 

What do you mean?

 

The dinosaurs are the biggest, easiest example of what

I'm talking about. The world was filled with these

amazing, majestic beasts, but their level of

intelligence could only go so far. The dinosaurs died

out in a major catastrophe, and yet mammals would not

have been able to flourish had that not been the case.

So, that's an example of chaos -- really bad news

catalyzing and allowing for new creative

possibilities.

 

But how much time do we have for creative

possibilities? If we don't do something soon about,

say, global warming, we're in trouble, right?

 

Global warming is something that we will not be able

to avoid. It will force us to make changes at a faster

rate, and on a larger scale, than we ever dreamed

possible. But here's the interesting thing: When you

look at evolution, complex adaptive systems can

respond faster the more complex they are. And human

beings, like it or not, are interconnected in some

profound and complex ways all over the world. I

believe we will make changes in the next 30 to 60

years that we can't even fathom. And it will be the

bad news, it will be the stupidity, the chaos, the

George Bushes of the world, that end up catalyzing

some of that change.

 

How do you see Bush helping the cause of evolution?

 

I didn't vote for him, but I thank God for George W.

Bush, because he is helping catalyze the rest of the

world. I mean, how many millions of people were united

for peace for the first time in human history, thanks

to George? I have a lot of faith in chaos, especially

the more complex we become. Ultimately, I'm not an

optimist, because an optimist is somebody who believes

that it doesn't matter what we do; things will get

better and better. I don't believe that. I'm an

ameliorist: I believe that what we do is going to make

a huge difference. There is no guarantee one way or

the other, but when I look at these long-term and

short-term trends, I am very hopeful.

 

During his far-flung career in journalism, Bay Area

writer and editor David Ian Miller has worked as a

city hall reporter, personal finance writer, cable

television executive and managing editor of a

technology news site. His writing credits include

Salon.com, Wired News and The New York Observer.