Dowd, apparently not able to let go of his Baptist indoctrination, now preaching to fellow Christians, about thanking God for evolution, blending evolutionary theory with Christian teachings and principles, writes in this book, of “day and night language.”
Day language is :
Night language is :
Dowd admits, in so many words, that, his target audience is those in Christendom. He passionately wants Christians to catch onto the deep time and deep space of what he considers “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Therefore he wants them to still cling to their night language/experience, of their religion and Bible, while embracing the day language/experience of facts and 13.8 billion years evolution.
Facts are God’s native language, says Dowd. God is still revealing His truths today, with discoverings of the scientists, like He was in night language days, but now revealing them in day language.
Almost finished reading Dowd’s book. I find it a delight to read and for some time have been in full agreement with his findings on science and religion as being compatible. Great read, well written and thought out. Thanks for suggesting the work, Awareness.
Prehistoric evidence shows that the gods were there when humanity became self-conscious. When modernity banishes the gods it does so at the cost of the depth of the human soul.
Golly … gee willikers (pun intended) … I’ll be darned … someone out here read the book … and enjoys it as much as I.
I think the title is attractive to some – maybe magnetic – intriguing to some, and downright stupid to some. And it’s the latter Dowd wishes to reach ; those that think evolution is a hoax ; the Bible believers, that take it literal.
And judging by the Creation Museum here in Kentucky, also take The Flintstones literal, with pictures of humans riding dinosaurs.
Great quotes promethean75. Thanks.
Methinks Dowd would agree with Ludwig’s anthropological materialism. To Dowd God is Reality, that is immanent in every tiny-weeny part of what she/he/it/they have produced, thru – The Greatest Story ever Told – of the evolution of the universe, up to the thoughts reading this page.
Dowd’s targeted audience is the Biblically based young earth creationists – otherwise known as young-earther’s ; those that want no part of evolving, that are hanging onto what Dowd terms ‘books written by “flat earthers.”’
Still today, they seek to deny deep space and deep time, and hold that evolution is one of the greatest hoaxes ever imposed upon MANkind (not humankind).
But isn’t their source/ancestry the same as everything else that exists today? Has evolution evolved anti-evolution resistance?
What we know about evolution is informed by the past, like archaeology, and anthropology. We know not where evolution is going. The dinosaurs went extinct. Is that the fate of the human species too?
Dowd, in his book – Thank God for Evolution – waxes rather preachy at times. In fact, entire sections of his book waxes preachy. It like he’s trying to push evolution along, trying to transform the human race into a more fair and just society, seeking to transform our institutions, religions, and corporations.
But that might not be where evolution is going at all. The human race might need to become extinct, to make room for another more improved species, like humans replaced dinosaurs.
As a result, In his preaching, his efforts to improve humankind, Dowd might be trying to piss up a rope. Some things are just impossible … without starting all over.
The human species has brought the 6th great extinction on the planet. Without a radical change in direction, it looks like we will destroy ourselves. Saving ourselves and life on the planet would require an unprecedented level of global cooperation. Apocalyptical Christians expect divine intervention from above and sometimes use it on as an argument for doing nothing to save ourselves from global environmental disaster. Spiritually minded evolutionists have repeatedly hoped for and sometimes worked towards a rise in global environmental consciousness that will lead to effective world-wide action. We may have already passed the tipping point where we can’t do anything about it. But despair which leads to doing nothing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Let’s face it. The 6th great extinction is not all the rage. In fact, I doubt all but a small percent of the almost 8 billion people on the globe know about it. And given the silence on ILP, toward your post, reveals even those that know about it don’t care.
Being human is universal among this 8 billion population. And humans will seek to meet their immediate needs, with little thought, or options to consider long term.
This is evolution at work. It might not look good for me and you, and us, but in the last 13.8 billion years evolution has done what from our present view some pretty crazy things. Perchance in this case, that we don’t care that we’re extincting ourselves. Evolution is inexplicable to human mentation. Who knows what it’s doing.
I’m a bit on the “ouch we’re allll gonna die” side of the fence too tbh. 3 things, in order of probability, give me some small hope.
proliferation of small nuclear reactors.
successful fusion.
alien intervention.
Our problems are really always energy problems. With enough cheap energy, everything is doable. The new design small nuclear reactors are safer, cheaper to build, and use pellets of not very disasterously dirty fuel. And clean. Fusion is the same, but a lot better on all counts. Plus yay, bonus helium. Or whatever.
Solves the water shortage problem with cheap desalination, and hell, worst comes to the worst, refidgerate the poles or some other whacky idea.
If neither of those things get off the ground… then damn, seemingly we do have aliens flitting around in the shadows, hopefully they’ll take pity on us and fix the planet.
Needless to say, we won’t fix things by cooperating - on a global scale - to cut emissions, humans just aren’t wired that way - hyperbolic discounting etc.
Back in the 60s there was thought to putting them into homes. But was decided against because it would be an easy grab for uranium.
They did put them into outer space, for power units up there. The downside to that is that when they come down – what goes up must come down – they break up and spew uranium into the atmosphere, and breathing in one particle smaller than the naked eye can see means certain death from cancer.
successful fusion.
From what little I know about Fusion is that so far it’s a pipe dream.
alien intervention.
They’d likely just wipe us out, for being such primitive barbaric animals.
Well we can’t go back. We can’t even go back to the mid 1800s, when population was only one billion. And most certainly can’t go back to “the garden,” back when we were hunter gathers.
We can only go forward from here, and so are dependent upon science to save us. Maybe evolution is doing science now. Let’s hope ; hope that science doesn’t destroy us before it has a chance to save us.
Otherwise, Whoopie! We’re all gonna die … and we become into the history bin of evolution … a very big heap so far.
[A] mood of universal destruction and renewal…has set its mark on our
age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and
philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos–the
right moment–for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” of the fundamental
principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly
not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious
human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take
account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy
itself through the might of its own technology and science…So much is
at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the
modern human.
C. G. Jung (died on June 6,1961)