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Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 07:19 pm.
From Wired Online:
Interview with Evolutionary Theologian Michael Dowd
The Rev. Michael Dowd is preaching a surprising message: Evolution is real and science points to the existence of God.
( Text of article here )
That creativity didn't exist at the beginning of time, making everything like a potter makes a pot, but exists through the universe in a nested sense. God, Goddess, Allah -- they're just proper names for that ultimate reality. God is a sacred proper name for 'largest nesting doll.' You may choose to call it by another name. Many people just call it the universe.
Hallelujah, Goddess! That is EXACTLY what I tell people when they ask me to define what I mean by "God" or the Goddess, and explain how I can hold religious views at the same time that I espouse purity in science education. If you want to heal the rift between religion and science, that's the way to go - understanding that religion is a metaphor for reality, a poetic way of dealing with what science says in a factual way. They don't have to contradict; they can co-exist beautifully.
That's why I get pissed at purist atheists like Richard Dawkins, who get all chesty about religion: their insistence on the idea that the only possible way to view religion is as a blinkered troglodyte clinging to a literal belief in fantastical nonsense. That's not only self-serving, it's prejudiced, and shows not just an incredible lack of imagination but also a profound disrespect for human intelligence, as if there were no possible way that such ideas could be held in a nuanced, poetic and even-handed way. And honestly, it's amusing as well, because it casts them as fundamentalists too. After all, if they insist that religion can only be viewed as fundamentalism, they're jumping right into that camp, albeit on the other side of the fence. No thanks - I'll take paradoxy over orthodoxy any day.
Read the interview. This guy seriously has his shit together. I sincerely hope his message catches on, because we can really use an injection of understanding, respect and common sense into the shouting match that the religion-science debate has become.
From Wired Online:
Interview with Evolutionary Theologian Michael Dowd
The Rev. Michael Dowd is preaching a surprising message: Evolution is real and science points to the existence of God.
( Text of article here )
That creativity didn't exist at the beginning of time, making everything like a potter makes a pot, but exists through the universe in a nested sense. God, Goddess, Allah -- they're just proper names for that ultimate reality. God is a sacred proper name for 'largest nesting doll.' You may choose to call it by another name. Many people just call it the universe.
Hallelujah, Goddess! That is EXACTLY what I tell people when they ask me to define what I mean by "God" or the Goddess, and explain how I can hold religious views at the same time that I espouse purity in science education. If you want to heal the rift between religion and science, that's the way to go - understanding that religion is a metaphor for reality, a poetic way of dealing with what science says in a factual way. They don't have to contradict; they can co-exist beautifully.
That's why I get pissed at purist atheists like Richard Dawkins, who get all chesty about religion: their insistence on the idea that the only possible way to view religion is as a blinkered troglodyte clinging to a literal belief in fantastical nonsense. That's not only self-serving, it's prejudiced, and shows not just an incredible lack of imagination but also a profound disrespect for human intelligence, as if there were no possible way that such ideas could be held in a nuanced, poetic and even-handed way. And honestly, it's amusing as well, because it casts them as fundamentalists too. After all, if they insist that religion can only be viewed as fundamentalism, they're jumping right into that camp, albeit on the other side of the fence. No thanks - I'll take paradoxy over orthodoxy any day.
Read the interview. This guy seriously has his shit together. I sincerely hope his message catches on, because we can really use an injection of understanding, respect and common sense into the shouting match that the religion-science debate has become.
