New Preface: Plume Paperback TGFE Now Available!

• Endorsements from 6 Nobel Prize-winning scientists
• Praise from other science lumnaries
• Responses from diverse religious leaders
• Purchase softcover online for $10.88 

As we observe the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his landmark book, On the Origin of Species, evolution has become firmly established as the central organizing principle of the biological sciences. Natural explanations for the growth of complexity through time ground all the other sciences, as well, from cosmology and chemistry to neuroscience and psychology. That everything within this universe has emerged through natural processes operating over vast spans of time is now well beyond dispute among scientists and the educated public. Yet even today, families and public school systems remain divided and the evolutionary worldview is still shunned by millions, perhaps billions, of religious believers around the world. Why?

The 7 Deadly Sins of Old-Time Religion

"A mistake about Creation will necessarily result in a mistake about God." —Saint Thomas Aquinas

One of the most important truths revealed in recent centuries is this: everything—the entire Universe—is in an ongoing process of deep-time transformation.  Galaxies and star systems evolve.  Planets evolve.  Life evolves.  Human cultures evolve.  Individuals and groups of all sizes evolve.  And our personal and collective thinking about life's big questions (including our concepts/stories of Ultimacy, God, or Undeniable Reality) evolve, too.  Reflecting on this is, I suspect, what led Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to write:

"Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis?  It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, and all systems must bow and satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable and true.  Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow."

Over the next few weeks, I will elaborate on The 7 Deadly Sins of Old-Time Religion, taking them one at a time.  I will show that there are 7 profoundly negative consequences of religious resistance to a measurable understanding of time and emergent view of grace.  Specifically, I will reveal how, from a religious naturalism point of view, a pre-evolutionary worldview frozen within scriptural literalism necessarily...

1.  Trivializes God, guidance, and good news;
2.  Balkanizes religion and bastardizes science;
3.  Desacralizes nature;
4.  Blasphemes death;
5.  Fails our children in three tragic, unnecessary ways;
6.  Denies individuals and families access to the most important saving wisdom for overcoming personal and relational challenges; and
7.  Blinds us from seeing the true nature of the current global integrity crisis.

Everything must evolve in order to remain viable.  Three billion years ago, life (bacteria and archaea) thrived in a context of 2% oxygen.  Today, anything less than 15% oxygen would wipe out all mammals.  In an ever-emerging, ever-developing Cosmos, conditions that were once healthy and lifegiving can later become dangerous or even deadly—which is, of course, why life must be so adaptive.

Traditional religions will either evolve like everything else or, paradoxically, they will destroy nearly everything they stand for (or maybe just go extinct).  I'm betting my life that they will evolve, and will become more lifegiving then ever—not just for their own members but for the entire Earth community.  This is, indeed, why I wrote Thank God for Evolution, and why my wife and I have been living on the road for 7 years, sharing a sacred, meaningful view of cosmic, Earth, life, and human history with religious and secular audiences across America. 

The boldest creedal assertions are in the future, not the past.  I foresee a time in the not-too-distant future when churches and other religious organizations preach and teach the science-based epic of evolution as our common creation story, and when this story is seen as foundational for moral instruction and teaching values to the next generations.  Widespread awareness of The 7 Deadly Sins of Old-Time Religion will, I pray, significantly further this process.

Stay tuned...

"God" as a Personification of Undeniable Reality

Birth, life, death, the cycles and rhythms of Nature, the elemental forces of the Universe—these are undeniably real.  Like it or not, we humans have always been in an inescapable relationship with a Reality that we could neither fully predict nor control.  And given the nature of our brains, there's one thing that people in every culture and throughout history have instinctually done: we've used metaphors and analogies to understand and relate to that which is unavoidably, undeniably real and/or mysterious.  We can't not do this.  Consciously or unconsciously, we will always interpret via metaphors. 

ALL images and concepts of God are more or less meaningful interpretations and personifications of Undeniable Reality, or Unavoidable Mystery.  And it didn't take a genius to figure out that if you trust, or have faith, in what is ultimately inescapable, your life works better than if you judge or resist what is Real.  This is not theological rocket science.

Whenever any story, any culture, or any scriptural passage claims "God said this..." or "God did that...," what follows is necessarily a meaningful interpretation of some individual or group's inner or outer experience; it is never a measurable fact.  In other words, had CNN or ABC News been there to record the moment of divine revelation, there would have been nothing out of the ordinary (nothing miraculous) to report on the evening news—nothing other than what was coming out of someone's mouth, or pen, or whatever folks wrote with back then.  If we fail to understand this, we belittle God and will surely miss what Reality is revealing today.  And we mock God if we imagine that a truly divine communicator would have spoken to humanity as a whole more clearly through goat herders and fisherman in the distant past, via their dreams and intuitions, than through cumulative evidence discovered by the global community of scientists alive today.  After all, if the worldwide, self-correcting scientific endeavor is anything, it is the pursuit of collective intelligence and a cultural system designed to hold people accountable for their factual statements—their truth claims.

As I discuss at length in Part II of TGFE ("Reality is Speaking"), facts are God's native tongue.  In the same way that Reality is always speaking to us individually through our feelings, circumstances, and relationships (i.e., through our experience), empirical evidence is how Reality (God) speaks to us collectively.  Few things are more important, it seems to me, than appreciating this and acting on it at all levels of society, the sooner the better.

Fortunately, this perspective seems to be resonating with lots of heavyweight science and religion leaders:

Endorsements from Nobel Prize-winning scientists
Praise from other Science Luminaries
Response from Religious Leaders Across the Spectrum (by Affiliation)

Also see:

Are God and Satan Real?
The Silly Debate Over God's Existence
Evolution as Meaningful, Inspiring Fact