Are God and Satan Real?

ABC Nightline recently staged two debates.  In one, participants argued over the question "Does God Exist?" The other, last night, debated the question "Doe Satan Exist?" Rarely have a witnessed a more brilliant display of unnecessary silliness for want of an evolutionary worldview.  (I'm referring to ABC News, not the participants.  Deepak Chopra mentioned evolution a couple of times and Carlton Pearson was a beautiful model of generosity of spirit.)  Without a deep-time understanding of our brains and the nature of human language, such questions are regarded not only as legitimate, but important. From a meaningful evolutionary perspective, however, questions such as "Does God Exist?" or "Does Satan Exist?" are revealed to be misleading at best, and demonically distracting at worst.

Do dreams exist?  Are they real?  Subjectively, of course they are!  But are they real objectively?  Well, it depends on what you mean by "real".  Certainly dreams are natural and experiential—and are subjectively realistic.  And dreams are, of course, correlated with very real brain activity as well as chemical, hormonal, and other physiological changes.  But fortunately for me, when I dream about Angelina Jolie I don't need to worry about Achilles (aka, Brad Pitt) stalking me down in a jealous rage—or my wife divorcing me.

I expect to write more on this subject in the not-too-distant future.  Until then, I invite interested readers to see the following previous posts of mine and a few passages from my book, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Sciene and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World.

The Silly Debate Over God's Existence
Metaphorical gods vs. Reality/God: Part 1
Metaphorical gods vs. Reality/God: Part 2
God is NOT a Supernatural Terrorist

There is indeed a force devoted to enticing us into various pleasures that are (or once were) in our genetic interests but do not bring long-term happiness to us and may bring great suffering to others. . . . If it will help to actually use the word evil, there's no reason not to. —ROBERT WRIGHT, author of The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are—the New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

TGFE: PAGES 160-161 (Good stuff follows!) ...

The Future of Religion: Evolutionary Trends

The other day I was talking with my dear friend and colleague in the Great Work, Jon Cleland Host, about recent polls on religion in America and around the world.  I greatly appreciated his perspective and asked him to contribute this GUEST BLOG POST.  It's lengthy but well worth the reading!

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One of the many empowering realizations that an evolutionary worldview gives us is that we can make some reasonable guesses about the future based on long term trends of the past.  We can enter the future with trust and with our eyes open, poised for some likely scenarios, instead of being blindly buffeted by inscrutable Fates.  In chapters 16 and 17 of Thank God for Evolution, Michael Dowd shows that if the 14 billion year history of the universe were compressed into a single century, then the next minute on the cosmic century timeline would represent 250 years. Surely, we should be able to make a few accurate assumptions about the next minute if we know the past 100 years of history!

Some events can't be predicted very well, such as distant supernovae or the direction of next week's stock market movement.   Others, however, are the result of long-term trends, and can at least be estimated based on those trends.  For instance, world population has been increasing rapidly for centuries, and it appears likely to continue to do so for several decades into the future.  When our day-to-day experience is affected by long-term trends, those trends can predict part of what our future (and our kids' future) will be like.  Out of all the aspects of society that affect our lives, let's look at religion.

If you are an American Gen X'er like me, you probably grew up in a world where the dominant religion was an unquestioned, moderate, mainline (Protestant or Roman Catholic) Christianity.  I remember some religious conflict in society (such as the fight over female ministers), but also remember times without conflict.  How much should I trust those memories of mine?

Anecdotal evidence (the memories and experiences of one or several people) is naturally a powerful force in our evolved minds.  After all, it's the only kind of evidence that our Ancestors had available for well over 99.9% of our existence.  It makes sense that we have evolved to pay a lot of attention to it.  However, our experiences are terribly limited, our recall quite selective, and our memories malleable by desire and expectation.  This is why anecdotal evidence is often not worth the paper it is (sometimes) printed on, and why it takes a conscious effort for us to go beyond it.

Luckily, the modern world often gives us powerful and effective supplements to anecdotal evidence.  The 20th century, unlike any century before it, generated a wealth of detailed data on an astounding array of subjects.  To ignore this evidence when looking into any subject is like driving with your eyes closed.  It's stupid, pointless, and often harmful.  So let's look at some recent religious trends...

From Mystery to Wonder: Science vs. God of the Gaps

The following post was written by my wife, Connie Barlow.

"Science cannot explain the origin of life," a man told me as I managed the book table at my husband's evening program last night.  The man had been explaining how he had come to accept evolution while maintaining his belief in God.  Then a younger man entered the conversation, warning, "But science may one day crack that mystery, too." I concurred, "A God of the Gaps is a dangerous approach for resolving science and faith."

Michael's program that evening (23 March 2009) was his newest illustrated talk, "Evolution and the Global Integrity Crisis", which he will also be presenting at the United Nations next week.  We were at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church near Philadelphia.  The event drew an audience from the surrounding Philadelphia community.  It was co-sponsored by the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia, Metanexus Institute, Narbarth Havurah, Church of the Redeemer, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, St. Luke United Methodist Church, and The Earth Center of the Delaware Watershed.

In order to make time for the global integrity theme in his new program, Michael had dropped some of the theology that he ordinarily presents (and that entails a large chunk of his book, Thank God for Evolution).  Specifically, he had excised the arguments leading up to a bold assertion: "An understanding of God that does not at least include the entire creative process of the Universe is, given our modern understandings, a trivial notion of God."  Alas, absent this perspective, moderate Christians will have little option but to continue taking refuge in today's version of "God of the Gaps" theology—that is, Intelligent Design.

Just how secure is the mystery of life's origin?  Is this argument in favor of a designer God well fortified from possible intrusions by explanatory science?  That is, how great are the gaps in scientific understanding of (a) the formation of complex organic molecules on or within the early Earth, and (b) natural and unguided processes for linking up such molecules into precursors of living systems?

A stunning gain in understanding the formation of complex organic molecules was reported in December 2008 - and not just in the science media: Nature Geoscience.  USA Today also printed an article titled "Life from Asteroid Collisions?". 

'The Great Disruption' Has Begun

The following appeared in today’s (March 7, 2009) issue of The New York Times.  I burst into tears of gratitude and hugged Connie after I read it aloud to her.  Untold millions of people throughout the world read Friedman's column.

The Inflection is Near? - by Thomas L. Friedman

Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can’t resist quoting from it. Consider this faux article from June 2005 about America’s addiction to Chinese exports:

FENGHUA, China — Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of [garbage] Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these.’ ... One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless [garbage]? I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible.”

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...

We can’t do this anymore.

The Silly Debate Over God's Existence

Few things are more absurd than the current debate over the existence of God.  Prior to an evolutionary worldview, such debates made sense.  In an evolutionary context, however—in light of what Ursula Goodenough and Terry Deacon call "The Sacred Emergence of Nature"—such arguments are outdated at best.  (I discuss this at length in chapters 4-7 of my book, Thank God for Evolution, the section titled "Reality is Speaking".) Here's how I begin Chapter 7, titled "What Do We Mean by the Word 'God'"?

Do you believe in life?

What an absurd question!  It doesn’t matter whether we “believe in” life.  Life is all around us, and in us.  We’re part of it.  Life is, period.  What anyone says about life, however, is another story, and may invite belief or disbelief.  If I say, “Life is wonderful,” or “Life is brutal,” or “Life is unimportant—it’s what happens after death that really matters,” you may or may not believe me, depending on your own experience and worldview.  What we say about life—its nature, its purpose, its meaning—along with the metaphors we choose to describe it—is wide open for discussion and debate.  But the reality of life is indisputable.  This is exactly the way that God is understood by many who hold the perspective of the Great Story—that is, when human, Earth, and cosmic history are woven into a holy narrative.  Our common creation story offers a refreshingly intimate, scientifically compelling, and theologically inspiring vision of God that can provide common ground for both skeptics and religious believers.  For peoples alive today, any understanding of “God” that does not at least mean “Ultimate Reality” or “the Wholeness of Reality” (measurable and nonmeasurable) is, I suggest, a trivialized, inadequate notion of the divine.

The crux of the problem, as I see it, is the failure of millions of people, religious and non-religious alike, to distinguish meaningful metaphor from measurable reality.  God as a subjectively meaningful interpretation simply cannot be argued against.  God is always a legitimate interpretation.  But God is NOT (and never has been) an actual, physical Being, as science and common sense define reality.  (Those who would attempt to argue that God is a REAL Father or King, but just in an unnatural, otherworldly sense are left in the bizarre position of claiming that God, the Creator of the Universe, is less real than the Universe, as I discuss here.)

HERE IS A WAY OUT OF THIS IMPASSE:  Whenever you hear the word ‘God', think ‘Reality'.  "I have faith in God" can be translated "I trust Reality".  "God is Lord" means "Reality rules".  Throughout the world, God has never been less than a mythic personification of Reality as a Whole, Ultimate Reality, or what today some call "the Universe".  If we fail to recognize this, we miss everything.  ALL images and characterizations of God are meaningful interpretations of Reality As It Really Is.  When we forget this, we will inevitably trivialize God, belittle science, and desecrate nature.  As renowned systems thinker Gregory Bateson has said,

Richard Dawkins: Rock Star in Oklahoma

 UPDATE: In September 2006, Michael Dowd posted a half hour PODCAST on this topic, titled "The New Atheists as God's Prophets"

 Yesterday (6 March 2009), Connie and I drove 90 minutes from our host's home in Stillwater, Oklahoma to the campus of Oklahoma University, just south of Oklahoma City, where a landmark event would be taking place that evening: a presentation by Richard Dawkins.  (Click HERE to see a video of the introduction to his presentation.)  Professor Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist of the highest rank—but he is also well known for rankling religious conservatives.  He is the author of the best-selling and controversial book, The God Delusion, and he has become perhaps the best known of "the new atheists."

My wife, Connie Barlow (whose science books have featured evolution), has known Richard Dawkins for years.  I've not yet met Richard in person but we've exchanged email on several occasions and he graciously allowed me to reprint a letter that he wrote to his (at the time 10-year-old) daughter as Appendix A in my book, Thank God for Evolution.  Connie and I made the long drive not just to hear Richard speak but to witness a rather unique phenomenon: a scientist/atheist whose presence on a college campus in the reddest of red states had a "rock star" feel to it—and had prompted a state legislator to introduce a resolution "expressing disapproval of the actions of the University of Oklahoma to indoctrinate students in the theory of evolution; opposing the invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak on campus."

Tom Atlee: A Brand New Thing Under the Sun

I recently sent an email to a few close friends and colleagues mentioning that I'm feeling led of late to focus attention, in my public presentations and interviews, on A) how the lack of an evolutionary worldview led to the current global integrity crisis, and B) how an evolutionary wordlview can help us move forward in healthy ways. Specifically, I asked, "If you were able to speak your own heart and mind to the world on this subject, what would you say?  What would be the main points you'd make (or would like me to make)?  What soundbytes or talking points would you suggest I include in my presentations and interviews?"

The following is what my dear friend, Tom Atlee, one of the world's leading voices in the field of collective intelligence, emailed me this morning.

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As a civilization we face challenges to our usual ways of doing things, our social, economic, and political systems -- all our systems, and even our cultural stories and technologies.  50, 100, 250 years from now, there is no way that we will look anything like we do today.  No way.  We are going to be radically different, one way or another. Some of those possibilities are truly thrilling, such as creating a truly sustainable, just, wise, enjoyable civilization for the first time on earth.  Other possibilities are downright terrifying.  For example, by continuing on our current path we could push climate change so far, we could make the climate so hot, cold, and/or wildly variable that Earth became unlivable for most complex life forms, including ourselves.Whatever else we believe or know or do or don't do to address the crises of our times, there are three overarching fundamental realities that will shape what happens for us humans in the next 50-250 years -- and ALL of them have to do with evolution.  Here are the fundamental realities of our times, which are fundamental realities of life: