Before I moved out of Michigan, I tried to connect with other Evolvers (that is, members of the site Evolver.net) in my area. I contacted Alan Scheurman, who leads the Evolver Detroit spore. He had listed EcoZoic Detroit as the spore’s website. The About page at that site is brief:
We are a locally focused initiative, facilitated by EcoZoic L3C, working to catalyze paths towards community empowerment, sustainability, and resilience in the city of Detroit. We are building and expanding mutually enhancing relationships among the community of life.
“Our own special role, which we will hand on to our children, is that of managing the arduous transition from the terminal Cenozoic to the emerging Ecozoic Era, the period when humans will be present to the planet as participating members of the comprehensive Earth community.” -Thomas Berry
To fill the gaps still present in my understanding, I searched the Web for these terms. The Wikipedia page for “Cenozoic” says it’s the most recent of three geologic periods, describing the last 65.5 million years, after the Cretaceous period ended. The same search for “Ecozoic” re-directs to the page about Michael Dowd, who’s described as “an American evangelist minister, evolutionary theologian and religious naturalism advocate.”
“Oh fuck,” I thought. “The Detroit spore is run by undercover evangelicals.” Luckily that premature conclusion wasn’t very accurate.
I watched an ABC interview on the website for Dowd’s book Thank God For Evolution and, though I remain somewhat skeptical, many of my fears were reduced. To clarify, my fears are based on the use of religious language to describe evolution or the progress of mankind. The language used in monotheistic religions is extremely vulnerable to misinterpretation, due to the inherently conservative nature of those religions. The goal is (and has to be, in a mass creed) to maintain tradition, beliefs, hierarchy, etc.
I can’t embed that ABC interview here, but I did find a similar one on YouTube from WREG-TV in Memphis (embedded below). I have to say, I was really impressed by this guy. Personally I have a problem with the fact that most scientists today don’t feel a conflict between their professional work and their religious beliefs, despite the enormous conflict that is usually present between the two. I figured Dowd would walk the same territory — or if not, he was probably trying to take the steering wheel from modern science and swerve the vehicle into a brick wall.
Instead of inspiring fear or hatred in me, Dowd convinced me that he may actually be capable of bringing Christianity up to speed. He and his wife (an atheist) drive around the country, sleeping in their van and working in people’s spare bedrooms. They’re trying to spread the message that there is no essential conflict between the language of science and religion. In his view, talking about the development of the universe after the big bang is no different than talking about the divine work of God. He seems to be expressing the idea that religious language was the best way to explain the universe at the time. Now we have other ways to explain it, ways that are more relevant at this time.
The point is that this marks a potential shift away from the concept of an omniscient, personified god who promises access to eternal life after death in heaven (and so on), to a new concept — one that is much more relevant, less vulnerable to manipulation, but (obviously) more difficult to explain and understand (especially for anyone who does believe in a personified god — or worse, those who believe that Jesus is still coming back to “save” them).
I haven’t read Dowd’s book yet, but I’m definitely interested in hearing more of what he has to say. Maybe this sort of movement will strengthen both science (which tends to reduce or devalue the individual in today’s post-industrial world) and religion (which was always supposed to be an individual journey of spirituality and higher meaning, not a subscription to a creed).
This is particularly exciting because, as I’ve learned from reading about Jungian archetypes, Christian symbolism is still very valid in human psychology. If we toss off all the arbitrary bullshit, then maybe we can reinvigorate the true purpose of the Christian myths, to the benefit of Western civilization as a whole. Yet now that I’ve watched the video below, I see that even Dowd is still pressing the idea of a personified god (it’s the use of He, with a capital “H,” that gets me) — so it can’t be that much of a jump forward.
