Comment
from
UTT:
Since
Darwin’s
proposal
that
all
life
is
the
product
of
chance
and
time,
people
who
profess
to
be
Bible
believing
Christians,
have
looked
for
ways
to
promote
the
idea
that
the
God
of
the
Bible
has
used
the
process
of
evolution
to
create.
While
this
may
be
comforting
to
the
person
who
believes
that
the
speculation
of
men
is
superior
to
God’s
revelation,
the
belief
that
millions
of
years
of
random
chance
events
has
molded
and
shaped
all
life
on
this
planet,
in
my
view,
is
wishful
thinking
and
unscientific.
If
Darwinian
evolution
is
true,
life
had
to
have
originated
from
non-life
by
some
spontaneous
process.
The
Law
of
Biogenesis
states
that
all
life
comes
from
pre-existing
life
–
there
are
no
exceptions.
So
if
this
is
case,
how
did
life
come
into
existence
in
the
first
place?
Further,
there
should
be
billions
of
examples
on
the
Darwinian
tree
of
life
showing
the
progression
of
life
from
one
kind
to
another.
To
date,
these
necessary
intermediates
are
non-existent.
So
why
would
a
Christian
embrace
a
view
that
evolution
explains
how
God
created?
Only
because
their
faith
in
man
is
greater
than
their
faith
in
God.
For
years,
as a
teacher
of
Biology,
I
embraced
a
belief
in
evolution
until
my
eyes
were
opened.
You
don’t
have
to
be a
religious
fool
to
believe
in a
biblical
Creator.
It
only
takes
common
sense
and
an
examination
of
the
facts.
For the
last six
years,
he has
traveled
across
North
America
with his
wife,
Connie
Barlow,
in a van
that
displays
an image
of
two fish
kissing
each
other -
one
labeled
Jesus,
the
other
Darwin -
explaining
to
conservative
and
liberal
congregations
why
understanding
and
accepting
evolution
will
bring
them
closer
to
spiritual
fulfillment.
The
religious
advantage
to
embracing
the
evolutionary
worldview,
Dowd
says,
is that
it
explains
our
frailties,
our
addictions,
our
infidelities
and
other
moral
deficiencies
as
byproducts
of
adaptation
over
billions
of
years.
And
that, he
says,
has a
potentially
liberating
effect:
never
mind
guilt;
once we
understand
our
sinful
ways, we
can get
past
them and
play a
conscious
role in
the
evolution
of
humanity.
Dowd
makes it
clear
that
he's not
talking
about an
intelligent
designer.
Instead,
he
exhorts
his
audience
to
supplant
- or
complement
- their
individual
notions
of God
with
sometimes-fuzzy
concepts
like
"cosmic
creativity."
Of
course,
Dowd is
hardly
the
first
religious
figure
to
reconcile
God and
evolution.
In 1996,
Pope John Paul II
declared
that
evolution
was
"more
than
just a
hypothesis."
And next
year,
the
Vatican
will
hold a
conference
to mark
the
150th
anniversary
of
Darwin's
"On the
Origins
of
Species."
In many
respects,
Dowd's
work
echoes
the once
highly
influential
writings
of the
20th
century
French
Jesuit
and
paleontologist
Pierre
Teilhard
de
Chardin,
who
described
evolution
as a
part of
God's
plan,
driving
all of
creation
toward a
sort of
magnetic
pole of
higher
consciousness
that he
called
the
Omega
Point.
But
Dowd's
preaching
also
draws on
more
contemporary
scientific
thinking.
Central
to his
pitch
about
a
"God-glorifying,
Christ-edifying,
Scripture-honoring
way of
thinking
about
evolution"
is how
findings
from
evolutionary
psychology
might
help
people
overcome
guilt
about
their
immoral
or
unhealthful
behaviors.
The
Bible
gives us
very
specific
answers."
Ham says
that
what
Dowd is
telling
his
audience
is "no
different
from
what an
evolutionary
atheist
would
preach"
with
some of
Dowd's
merely
subjective
feelings
"mixed
in."
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