We are facing a planetary crisis that is unparalleled in human history. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that we are at a tipping point. Species extinction is accelerating, global warming is melting the polar icecaps at a rate that exceeds all scientific predictions, and our air, water, and soil is rapidly becoming a toxic soup that is ending up in our own bodies. We have only a few years to reorient ourselves and avert a disaster from which there may be no return.

The good news is that there is an emerging groundswell of people who are awakening to a universe that is alive, purposeful, and unfolding in trajectory toward increased complexity, consciousness, and compassion. It is dawning on many of us that after 13.7 billion years, we are the presence of the evolutionary process that has become self-aware - and that while the beauty of the cosmos consists of its splendid diversity, there is no disconnection anywhere in the universe.

READ ON

The Salvation of Religion: From Beliefs to Knowledge

Much has been written and countless discussions have ensued in recent years about the seemingly inevitable decline of Christianity and rise of secularism in America in the 21st century, which is along the lines of what happened in Europe in the mid 20th century.
Thinking and speaking of God in traditional ways (thereby using mostly biblical metaphors) has cost all forms of traditional faith in the western world both relevance and credibility. Indeed, I'd go so far as to suggest...

I was at a conference just recently, where we told tales of vampire bats that share their blood, bacteria that work together, and monkeys that ease group tensions by making love. It set me thinking about the evolution of morality, for there is one story of it that's often told, and it begins with a problem. Natural selection favors the best-adapted individual: it's called survival of fittest. It explains why we feel fear or lust. But how can this 'selfish' account of natural selection explain moral emotions like altruism that might lead the individual to abandon their self-interest in favor of others, even to the point of self-sacrifice?

A recent post by Mark Vernon of Religion Dispatches traces some findings of David Sloan Wilson who is a biologist researching and suggesting that the so-called "selfish gene" proposed by evolutionary biologists of the past is a fallacy. Instead, Wilson's research has lead him to posit the idea that we haven't, as humans, evolved toward the ends and purposes only of the self but rather more toward the aims and benefit of the groups in which individuals live.

Although I haven't delved very deeply into the findings of Wilson, what he's suggesting is quite exciting to me. The notion that we are genetically geared toward doing what's best for the communities in which we work, play, love, live, etc. just makes sense to me from my own personal experience of the world but also from the perspective of evolutionary theory.

For a long time, so-called supernatural (pre-natural) spirituality gave us the best answers we had. Prior to advances in technology and scientific ways of testing truth claims, factual answers were, in fact, simply not available. It was not just difficult to understand infection before microscopes brought bacteria into focus; it was impossible. It wasn't just difficult to understand the structure of the Universe before telescopes allowed us to see galaxies; it was impossible. Similarly, I now suggest that it is impossible to understand God's nature and how God is communicating to humanity today if we look only to the Bible and ignore current, public revelation available through science.
Science, well done, is God teaching us, revealing the workings of the Universe to us right here and now.