We All Live in Darwin's World
Sunday | 01 March 2009
Discover Magazine
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.
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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.
Read More...
Evolution-Loving Evangelical Comes To Houston
Monday | 09 February 2009
Houston Press
by Olivia Flores Alvarez
It's been 200 years since the birth of Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species, so we guess it's about time that religion and science stopped fighting and figured out some common ground.
The Reverend Michael Dowd, an ordained evangelical preacher, and his wife Connie Barlow, an atheist, are doing their part to make that happen. They travel the country with The Gospel of Evolution Roadshow (it's really just Dowd and his wife in a camper), preaching the marriage of science and faith, God and technology, and they've made it to Houston.
Dowd says you can't truly have one without the other and he's got a pretty good argument as to why.
Read More...
It's been 200 years since the birth of Darwin, and 150 years since the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species, so we guess it's about time that religion and science stopped fighting and figured out some common ground.
The Reverend Michael Dowd, an ordained evangelical preacher, and his wife Connie Barlow, an atheist, are doing their part to make that happen. They travel the country with The Gospel of Evolution Roadshow (it's really just Dowd and his wife in a camper), preaching the marriage of science and faith, God and technology, and they've made it to Houston.
Dowd says you can't truly have one without the other and he's got a pretty good argument as to why.
Read More...
Where Darwin meets Genesis
Thursday | 23 October 2008
Chicago Daily Herald
By Marni Pyke
In 1925, the Scopes monkey trial generated headlines, hoopla and hate between proponents of teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in schools and those who called it blasphemous.
It wouldn't be the last time questions of faith have divided the body politic as overtones of religion in this year's presidential contest show.
The Rev. Michael Dowd wants to change that.
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By Marni Pyke
In 1925, the Scopes monkey trial generated headlines, hoopla and hate between proponents of teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in schools and those who called it blasphemous.
It wouldn't be the last time questions of faith have divided the body politic as overtones of religion in this year's presidential contest show.
The Rev. Michael Dowd wants to change that.
Read More...
Evolutionary Evangelist
Friday | 20 June 2008
Washington Post
by Claire Hoffman
I was just about to toss my New York Times Magazine this morning when this article on Darwinists for Jesus fell open. It's about evolutionary evangelist Michael Dowd who, with his wife, has been traveling the nation and preaching on the sacredness of evolution. I love stories like this, that show the ways that religious thinking can adapt and synthesize to totally modern theories.
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by Claire Hoffman
I was just about to toss my New York Times Magazine this morning when this article on Darwinists for Jesus fell open. It's about evolutionary evangelist Michael Dowd who, with his wife, has been traveling the nation and preaching on the sacredness of evolution. I love stories like this, that show the ways that religious thinking can adapt and synthesize to totally modern theories.
Read More...
Darwinists for Jesus
Sunday | 15 June 2008
New York Times Magazine
by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
In 1981, Michael Dowd would have counted himself among the millions of conservative Christians who blame Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the idea of a godless, purposeless universe for the moral decline of society. That year, as a freshman at Evangel University in Springfield, Mo., Dowd felt a rush of indignant anger in biology class when the professor held up a textbook that taught evolution. As he stormed out of the classroom, Dowd could not have imagined that he would come to view evolution as a spiritually inspiring idea that religion must embrace.
In the years that followed, Dowd shed his more conservative views and served as a pastor in the liberal United Church of Christ. Today he calls himself an evolutionary evangelist. 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.
Read More...
In 1981, Michael Dowd would have counted himself among the millions of conservative Christians who blame Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the idea of a godless, purposeless universe for the moral decline of society. That year, as a freshman at Evangel University in Springfield, Mo., Dowd felt a rush of indignant anger in biology class when the professor held up a textbook that taught evolution. As he stormed out of the classroom, Dowd could not have imagined that he would come to view evolution as a spiritually inspiring idea that religion must embrace.
In the years that followed, Dowd shed his more conservative views and served as a pastor in the liberal United Church of Christ. Today he calls himself an evolutionary evangelist. 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.
Read More...