By Michael Dowd’s article ”Why I Thank God for Charles Darwin“ doesn’t have your average Christian conclusion:
But when I look back over my life and reflect on the significant people who have blessed me, my relationships, and my world, Jesus and Darwin are at the top of my list.
The point is refreshing, even though it strikes me as a little weird. (“Darwin blessed me, my relationships, and my world” just sounds creepy.)
Of course some of the responses to the article from some of the humble, God-fainting fudies are like this one:
Mr. Dowd has strayed from the truth. Hopefully, he will humble himself, crying out to God for grace and truth, lest he continue his deceptive decline.
Entropist: These idiots are wrong on so many different levels, its hard to... 
Just a Guy: Me an my wife have negotiated infidelity. Meaning she can be with other guys as long as she doesn’t hide... 
Gwenny: Absolutely not! The world has plenty of people having kids. A child consumes HUGE amounts of resources, which from both a... 
Siberia: Or maybe they know they have neither patience nor inclination to deal with the fruit of their loins and thus, rather than be... 
DDM: Repubs and Dems. He’s saying they only take first impressions and... 
CM: Good point, most religions encourage having a lot of children. From an evolutionary standpoint you sort of owe it to your... 
Jasowah: “They don’t go beyond those emotions, and that’s the... 
9 Comments
I’ve heard/read Dowd on the radio and elsewhere. His theology (if you can call it that) is well out into the wild frontier where it seems IIRC like pantheism dressed up in Christian language. Not that that bothers me, of course, but I can see where Christians of even moderate orthodoxy might go: WTF?
I’m always a little uneasy with Christians who make a big show out of embracing evolution. Do they realize that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct? Do they realize that evolution is heartless, as is just as likely to produce a guinea worm, screw fly or rabies virus as a human or a bunny? Do they realize that the process is unguided, and that we were not destined to evolve?
The theists I have met who embrace evolution are more inclined towards deism than anything else. God is awesome, but also alien.
And of course, deism and christianity just don’t fit together, because “It’s not a religion – it’s a relationship”
Spinoza’s God could maybe be Christ’s god, if the gospels weren’t too accurate, but he certainly couldn’t be the Christian god.
To say we are not meant to evolve is like saying we are not living. Maybe we are not meant to exist forever but certainly our very short time here we evolve.
Evolution could be mistaken for energy flowing from one form to another but certainly modern science has proven that evolution happens.
This ideas that Christian’s believe we are created from god and we can’t evolve only fits into what the idea of religion has become to day. Almost an irrational feeling that one must just believe. No real basis on fact, just misinterpreted stories that we as people that need something to identify their lives with attach to as themselves.
How can something not be so when it happens before our eyes everyday in our real life. To say we cannot evolve would be to say we are not witnessing evolution happen in our day to day lives.
We are no different from any other entity of energy in the entire universe. We are made of the same energy formed in the same ways as any other object we can sense or see. We have a sense of ideology, beliefs, culture, sense of entitlement, whatever you choose to call it that leads us with emotional, irrational thought and ideas. We feel like we are the top of the totem pole, but on the grand scheme, we are only a speck of energy thats reality is a world that only exist in our mind.
We evolve on our short time, but this means nothing. We evolve only as energy that changes trying to equalize itself. Just like the world does and on the bigger picture, the universe.
Mark Babineaux – your comment is the most accurate statement on this page, right on! Of course we and every living thing on this planet evolves. Brown bears evolved into that color because of living in the forest, polar bears are white and live in the snow, (Or God snapped his paintbrush and made it so, I forgot). Darwin saw a long orchid and made the prediction that there had to be a moth with a 12-inch tongue to pollinate it. More than a century later, science proves him right, the moth was captured on video pollinating the orchid with it’s ridiculously long tongue. Observations like these are obvious and infinite in the natural world.
Ed, I’m not sure that’s what Mark was saying, but only because I’m not sure what Mark was saying anyway… he seems to be saying that religion is in fact for evolution of a personal kind, and therefore religious supports evolution.
But religion drives adherents to convergent evolution with Ovines, rather than divergent evolution into various adaptive forms.
wazza-
Judging from Mark’s site, he’s a devotee of the New Thought movement – “The Secret” and so forth. I think he’s equivocating and using “evolution” to mean something other that “descent with modification.” Exactly what, I’m not sure.
God is the same abstract that everyone sees from his/her vantage and talks about. Unless you think there are many of them (Gods) out there of course. :-)
Also, Why only Darwin? He’s just a tree in one great forest. :-(
Dowd was interviewed on the Infidel Guy show last Thursday. The interview is up on youtube now:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qLR6Ss9Bll8
Listen if you want. I have a low tolerance for IG.