Steve & I went to Barnes & Noble Saturday night to see the Rev. Michael Dowd speak on his book, Thank God for Evolution, and find out how the marriage of science and religion could transform our lives and world. We were expecting to hear some sentimental pseudoscience that focused on evidence that we were created by God in the image of God. But we were surprised.
There was the expected amount of watered-down science. Dowd talked about how human nature (virtue, temptation, and sin) can be explained in terms of the biological evolution of the brain. He presented a diagram of the evolved human brain designed by his wife, popular science writer Connie Barlow:
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The lizard represents the “Lizard Legacy,” which he said just manages the three… F’s… feeding, fffff-something, and fucking, only he didn’t say fucking—he said “copulation.” (Get it? Copulation doesn’t start with an F! You thought he was going to say it, but no, he’s more wholesome than that.) Then there’s the “Fuzzy L’il Mammal,” which… I don’t remember what he attributed to that… general area… of the brain. Basic ability to reason? Caring for young? Pack mentality? Then there’s the “Monkey Mind,” which cares about things like status and basic communication. And, finally, the “Higher Porpoise,” which he said is exactly what it sounds like. That is, presumably, the part of the brain that is moral or ethical or religious or whatever word you want to use. He talked about how understanding our sins and our humanity required knowledge and understanding about the conflicts between these parts of our brain.
And, of course, this is a gross oversimplification. To attempt to explain, say, marital infidelity entirely in terms of biology is… I don’t even know what it is. Maybe just unromantic.
So his science was a bit fuzzy. But his main argument was actually reasonable… at least, we think so. He spoke about “day language” and “night language”. “Day language,” he said, are things that are plausible and true in the reality that exists when you are awake and alive in the world. “Night language,” he said, was things that are plausible and true when you sleep. The Bible stories may be interpreted as being written in “night language,” which we think was just a euphemism for “metaphoric language.” We think he was arguing for a literal interpretation of scientific fact and a metaphoric interpretation of the Bible. So, basically, he’s selling Unitarianism.
So you’d think I’d have gone for it, but actually, Steve & I were left with really different impressions of the talk… his more favorable than mine. Surprising, considering I’m the Unitarian. Steve thought it was reasonable to try and convince hardcore “flat earth” Christians to believe in science, even if doing so required watering down fact and speaking in flowery language. I think speaking about religion in euphemistic terms think is both condescending and ineffective. Things are true in the world, or they aren’t. Stories are metaphor, or they’re fact. There’s very little in between for me.
So? It was an experience. I’d like for us to go more place we don’t belong more often.
