I’ve been listening to Michael Dowd’s podcast lately and I’m really liking his naturalistic view of reality. I haven’t read his book yet but I think his spiritual and scientific insights offer a meaningful way forward for Christianity. I totally agree with a couple things he writes in one of his recent blog posts:

It is impossible not to trivialize and demean God and gospel without a science-based, deep-time appreciation of human nature, our shared ancestry, the trajectory of big history, and the creative role played by death at all levels of the universe.

This is reminiscent of what I hear Peter Rollins say about fundamentalists, when they employ a literal reading of scripture they are not taking the bible seriously enough!

Another excerpt from Dowd’s post:

The concepts of theism and atheism came into use before we had an evidential understanding of how the world, in fact, came into being, and before we learned that Creation itself is creative.  Given what we now know about our origins, the theist-atheist dichotomy no longer makes sense.  Both presuppose a trivial, unnatural God and a Cosmos that is not itself divinely creative.  Reality is my God and integrity is my religion.  By this, I mean that what is real is my ultimate commitment and being in right relationship with Reality/God, and assisting humanity in this process, is my calling and deepest inspiration.

Tags:evolutionevolutionary christianityMichael Dowdnatrualism