Today at 4pm eastern time on Shapevine. [actually, it just got rescheduled until March. Sorry] My friend Mike Morrell will be hosting a 45 minute interview with Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World.
Thank God for Evolution is a hefty, ambitious, glossy-colored book with an audacious title. It arrived a few months ago on my doorstep and to be honest, the book gave me the willies. I am not sure what the willies are, exactly, but i think i felt them. It had page after page of endorsements from everyone under the sun, from religious leaders of every stripe possible, and stripes I had never heard of, and then some more stripes. What a collection!
Normally I don’t read glossy books with schlicky sales pitches and the book seemed to embrace panentheism or worse. However, I had just read an older biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who loved collecting rocks and was excited about the discoveries and developments of the sciences of his day and I confess that some prejudices against him paled a little as i read his story. Thus, being more open to the “marriage of science and religion” approach of Michael Dowd, I started to read through his book. But lo and behold, I was still in Willieville. Which is why I haven’t reviewed the book. Or finished reading it.
But I will say this. I think Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, despite being vilified as a heretic by the Catholics, was a lot closer to orthodox Christian belief than Michael Dowd appears to be with his quasi-pantheistic bent and his lack of trust in the Scriptures because of their historical distance from us. But I am willing to stand corrected if I have been too hasty to judge.
However, with Dowd’s Assembly of God background and identification with the Christian church, it might be worth tuning into the conversation to hear what he has to say.
You can download Mike Dowd’s book here.
Internet Monk (Michael Spencer) has a good but critical review in which Michael Dowd interacts with him in the comments.
Oh yeah . . . I looked up “willies” in an online dictionary:
Noun 1. willies – feelings of uneasiness; “that guy gave me the willies”
disquietude, edginess, inquietude, uneasiness – feelings of anxiety that make you tense and irritable
Michael is a character and well worth tuning in. Yeah – Michael finally beat out Kester in the endorsement department.
I read a little of Tielhard de Chardin on a town stopover during my AT hike. I enjoyed his thoughts on connection to God through our work, but otherwise don’t remember that much of what I read.
It would be interesting to see whether Dowd’s book ends up having a uniting or a dividing effect. Then again, it doesn’t take much to divide!
Peace.
Hello,
I am halfway through your book: Thank God for Evolution.” I am impressed and I am a Christian believer. I am also surprised that there are no references to Carl Jung and his concption of the “Collective Unconscious” nor Dean H. Hammer’s “The God Gene–How faith is hardwired in our genes.” I am sure that you must be familier with both of these.
Please don’t give my e-mail address to any other entity. I get too much e-mail now that I don’t have time to read. I don’t want to change my e-mail address at this time because of too much mail.
Thanks,
Sherry vonde