We All Live in Darwin's World

by Karen Wright

You could call Helen Fisher a Darwinian matchmaker. The acclaimed anthropologist from Rutgers University is also a best-selling author of books on love and the chief scientific adviser to an online dating service called Chemistry.com. This service utilizes a questionnaire that Fisher developed after years of research on the science of romantic attraction. It reveals which of four broad, biologically based personality types an applicant displays and helps identify partners with compatible brain chemistry. In designing the questionnaire, Fisher relied on the principles of evolutionary psychology, a field inspired by Charles Darwin’s insights. She has even used those principles to size up Darwin himself. (He is a “negotiator,” “imaginative and theoretical,” “unassuming, agreeable, and intuitive”—but also married, alas, and dead.)

Fisher’s work is just one of the innumerable offshoots of Darwin’s grand theory of life. In the 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, it seems no sphere of human thought or activity has been left untouched by Darwinian analysis. Evolutionary theory has infiltrated the social sciences, where it has been used to explain human politics and spending habits. It has transformed computer science, inspiring problem-solving algorithms that adapt and change like living things. It is cited by a leading theoretical physicist who proposes that evolution helped shape the laws governing the cosmos. A renowned neuroscientist sees ideas of selection as describing the honing of connections among brain cells. Literary critics analyze the plots, themes, and characters of novels according to Darwinian precepts. Even religion, the sector most famously at odds with Darwin, now claims an evolutionary evangelist.

Author's Corner: Reverend Michael Dowd

The Reverend Michael Dowd is one of the leading voices in the Evolutionary Theology movement and the author of "Thank God For Evolution."

You were once a fundamentalist Christian who believed the earth was 6,000 years old. What made you change your mind?

I came to see that God has been revealing truth in the last 200 years that the biblical writers couldn't possibly known. Things like extinctions-98% or more of the species that once existed are no longer here. Moses couldn't have known that. That's a genuine revelation.

'Evolutionary evangelist' to speak in Bellevue

No matter how you look at it, it's hard to deny: Throughout much of the world, science and religion are vicious opponents.

Rev. Michael Dowd wants to change all that.

The "evolutionary evangelist" and author of "Thank God for Evolution" doesn't just embrace scientific thinking -- he argues that scientific facts reveal the work of God.

Before he speaks at various Bellevue churches in a couple weeks, Dowd took a little time to answer some questions.

Michael Dowd on The Sheena Metal Experience

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Michael Dowd is bringing his message to Ashland

Traveling evangelist Michael Dowd is bringing his message to Ashland that it's possible to believe in God and evolution at the same time.

Author of "Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion will Transform Your Life and Our World," Dowd says as a young man he believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible that God created the world in a short period of time several thousand years ago.

Evangel Alumnus Believes in Evolution and Creationsim

Written by Erika Brame

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Where do we come from and how did we get here?
These are questions people have pondered for centuries.
One man has written a book on how two seemingly opposite views can become one.

KSMU's Erika Brame spoke with the author and one of his critics.

Religion, science should exist in harmony

By Rev. Carleton Stock, Northminster Presbyterian Church

Last March, the Rev. Michael Dowd came to our church to make a presentation based on his book, "Thank God for Evolution." The room was full, and he was well received.

Dowd has been called America's evolutionary evangelist. He has dedicated his life to proclaiming the "Great Story" of a sacred view of cosmic, biological and human evolution.

He gives thanks for evolution

By David Hasemyer

To make a point, the Rev. Michael Dowd drops to his knees and scoops an imaginary handful of dust to his face and breathes deeply.

The biblical scripture Dowd is pantomiming comes from Genesis and says: "God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."

Thinking large spells end of evolution 'war'

by Bryan Patterson

MICHAEL Dowd, a man with a passion for science and religion, calls himself an evolutionary evangelist.

Since 2002, the ordained United Church of Christ minister and his atheist wife, science writer Connie Barlow, have travelled the world celebrating evolution as a grand epic spiritual story.

They have dedicated their work to proclaiming the "great news of a sacred view of cosmic, biological and human evolution".

Pentecostal minister Michael Dowd preaches merger of science/religion after 'evolutionary epiphany'

by Aaron Ogg

SPRING LAKE -- The Rev. Michael Dowd said an evolutionary worldview is invaluable for enriching one's faith in God.

"My focus and inspiration is in what's natural, in what's real, in what science tells us about everything -- including our own brains," said Dowd, author of the 2009 book "Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World."