Thank God for Evolution!

I just saw Michael Dowd speak about evolutionary theology at a local church. He is the author of Thank God for Evolution! and other works. I was leery of his ideas at first, but what he said for the most part agrees with what I know to be true.

While walking to the church (a few blocks from my house), I passed an elderly couple who were walking to their church, a fundamentalist evangelical Christian one. The subject of evolution came up, and the old man said it is a lie. He said the final result will be who gets to go to heaven. I said that the Bible teaches God made man from dust and science says much the same thing. My final words to him were to ask if he also believed the earth was flat, because that is what a literal reading of the Bible indicates. I said if you're going to insist on fundamentalism, you might as well go all the way.

I went up to see Michael Dowd after his presentation. I commented that I recognized he was familiar with Alan Watts, since he had used the analogy of people coming out of the universe the same way apples come out of apple trees, one that Alan Watts used in many of his talks. Michael Dowd did not remember where he had heard it, but thanked me for giving him the source. The subject of plagiarism came up, and I mentioned the famous case of George Harrison. I was surprised nobody knew about it, so I explained how My Sweet Lord used the same chords and melody as the Chiffons' He's So Fine.

I waited a bit and then offered to play my evolution song for Mr. Dowd and those standing around. Nobody minded, so I played it. The television reporter asked if I had written it, and I said it was one of hundreds of songs I had written playing guitar while riding a bicycle for tens of thousands of miles. Mr. Dowd expressed surprise at that, and the television reporter assured him that it was true, that he (the reporter) had seen me himself and I had been in the local newspaper.

Later a woman came up and asked Mr. Dowd to explain how free will exists. He said we have a choice to decide which of the many conflicting drives within us we will follow. I mentioned the episode of The Changeling from the original Star Trek television series, where a robot spacecraft absorbed the contents of Lieutenant Uhura's mind and described it as "a mass of conflicting impulses."

I could have stayed longer but it was getting late so I left.