{"id":587,"date":"2009-02-07T13:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T13:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/02\/metaphorical-gods-vs-realitygod\/"},"modified":"2009-02-07T13:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T13:26:00","slug":"metaphorical-gods-vs-realitygod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2009\/02\/metaphorical-gods-vs-realitygod.html","title":{"rendered":"Metaphorical Gods vs. Reality\/God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\"\"<\/a> Rev. Michael Dowd<\/span><\/em>\n
Evolutionary Evangelist Michael Dowd<\/a> has a very good essay titled \u201cMetaphorical gods vs. Reality\/God<\/a>\u201d and I encourage you to go read it. Understand that he is mainly writing for Christians and he is primarily trying to show that evolution is not incompatible with their religion (unless, of course, you\u2019re a fundamentalist who insists on reading the Bible literally \u2013 then there\u2019s no hope for you).\n

I\u2019ve found Michael Dowd\u2019s books and presentations to be enlightening, interesting, and even inspiring. I think his concept of God (or as Pagans would express it, Goddess and God) as \u201cUltimate Reality\u201d and \u201cthe largest Creative Whole\u201d are honest and good. I think his comment that \u201cGod is more than the universe\u201d is also correct, and not just because there is so much about the universe we don\u2019t know. I think the work he and his partner\/wife Connie Barlow are doing is truly sacred.<\/p>\n

But while there is nothing in anything he writes that I would challenge, I\u2019m still struck with the same feeling I had listening to Davidson Loehr \u2013 where\u2019s the room for religious experience? <\/p><\/div>\n

I don\u2019t expect Christians (or Muslims or Buddhists or atheists or even other Pagans) to accept my \u201csubjectively meaningful interpretations\u201d (to use Dowd\u2019s phrase) as objective fact. But for me, they are more than metaphors \u2013 much much more. <\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rev. Michael Dowd Evolutionary Evangelist Michael Dowd has a very good essay titled \u201cMetaphorical gods vs. Reality\/God\u201d and I encourage you to go read it. Understand that he is mainly writing for Christians and he is primarily trying to show that evolution is not incompatible with their religion (unless, of course, you\u2019re a fundamentalist who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMetaphorical Gods vs. Reality\/God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rev. 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