True. I think Dowd sees “Ultimate Reality” as God because of his evangelical background. The word God to him is a symbol of what he assumes to have to exist, which is ultimately, well, reality. In fact, in his book he calls reality God.
It’s his thing ; something that we all can agree upon ; that doesn’t depend on believing ; reality is, well, a actual real thing ; we might say as real as the consciousness writing and reading this post.
Hey, I haven’t finished reading his book. But maybe the evolution of the universe from 13.8 billion years ago, all the way up to this living consciousness, is why Dowd asks and says :
I don’t want to diminish “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” I think deep time and deep space, and the evolution of it is a great way of looking at our development, and that of the universe, both present and future (evolution is not done) ; a great ‘world view,’ if you will. But I’m not sure about personifying it.
I’m not sure about imbuing it with personhood like that of the evangelical belief in a personal God. And, unlike Michael Dowd, I don’t think I can worship it … again, like evangelicals and others worship Yahweh.
However, Dowd does consider that his gospel of evolution reveals “Ultimate Reality.” Reality is God, to hear Dowd tell it. And worship of that God is to honor it to such an extent that we align ourselves to Reality.
It does sound like that would produce the best mental health possible ; if our brain chemistry doesn’t work against it, producing delusion, or misalignment to Reality.
So maybe I can have a type of worship toward Realty, if that means aligning with it. And maybe it helps to personify it.
I don’t know. I’m new to all of this. I don’t even know what Ultimate Reality is.
From my point of view ultimate reality is inferable intuitively but unknowable as it is in itself. It is the object of philosophical faith although some like Rorty reject the intuition as illusory.
It’s a good thing we named most of the dinosaurs like a hundred years ago when all we were into was mythology and speaking Latin, if they just learned about dinosaurs now and had to name 100s there’d be a Heckin Chonkosaurus and a Northern Thicc Scaleyboy
Creatheism
[size=75]“We have all heard some
fundamentalist-minded person say
something like, ‘Don’t tell me I’m
related to monkeys.’
The fact of the matter is that now
that we have discovered DNA and
its code, we know that we are not
only related to monkeys, we are
related to zucchini. So let’s get over it.”[/size]
—MARLIN LAVANHAR
Hey everybody. Sorry for being absent for awhile ; heath issues.
First off I’m a newbie out here. I’m just beginning to get my see (sic) legs.
I feel to admit that I’m drawn to Thank God for Evolution because I identify with the author’s life journey. We both were ‘born-againers.’ We have that in common. And we both left it behind but can’t get it out of our system. After all – as Dowd has it, now that he’s a evangelist of evolution – that we’re in the middle of a so far 13.8 billion process of evolution, evolution has brought us to here, and is continuing when we – the royal we at present – are long gone.
In short, Dowd does claim that we evolved from early life forms, like reptiles, apes and such (simplifying), even earlier of course, so evolution has left those inborn natures lingering within us ; such as, the basics : “Eat, Survive, Reproduce.” But those natures and instincts were for challenges back then, don’t fit well today, and give us problems and challenges in our modern age (and maybe is why we live in a postmodern age – produced by those inborn natures, mixed with modernism … IMHO.
Here Dowd speaks of what he likes to call, “The Monkey Mind” :
"Why does our “Monkey Mind” exhaust us with incessant chatter, and what can we do about it?
This part of our brain, the neocortex, could be called our chatterbox, calculator, or computer brain because it is incessantly talking to itself (fretting about the past and worrying about the future), performing rudimentary cost-benefit analyses, and computing the balance of favors and debts in each of Furry Li’l Mammal’s social relationships. Monkey Mind is the nickname I shall choose here, because that name is already in use by Buddhists, . . ."
Dowd, Michael. Thank God for Evolution (p. 16 and p. 150). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Okay, thank God for evolution. But who do we thank for devolution? As Mark Twain quipped : “I don’t believe in evolution. Man devolved. Into the lowest form of animal on the earth.” - Paraphrased from memory.
But Dowd does do that. As to the lowest form of animal on the earth, Dowd does admit our animal ancestry. He names them :
Furry Li’l Mammal
Lizard Legacy
Monkey Mind
According to Dowd, these are latent animal instincts within us, that give us challenges and troubles we have to deal with in life. He calls them “inherited proclivities.” To Dowd these are what produced the notion of the fall, formed by people long in the past, that knew nothing of evolution from simple chemical reactions in the prebiotic soup, to animals and plants. So not knowing evolution they named these ‘lower’ animal instincts ‘the fall.’
But Dowd contradicts Twain. To him man didn’t devolve into the lowest form of animal on the earth, but into the highest form of animal on the earth.
So Dowd does “integrate two seemingly conflicting myths.”