A Reply From Michael Dowd!

Just a few days ago I posted a blog post mentioning Michel Dowd’s Book “Thank God for Evolution” among the theistic evolution movement in America. Not long after, I received a comment from Dowd himself.

I am am not sure how he found my little website, but I am truly grateful for his attention. Below you will find the comment he sent me, along with my reply. I hope you get a lot out of it.

“Thanks for the mention of my book (even if disparagingly).

There is, however, a fairly serious point you are overlooking…

Whenever ANY story, culture, or scriptural passage claims “God said this” or “God did that,” what follows is necessarily what some person or group of people felt or thought or wished or wanted God to say or do, often as justification after the fact. These claims are never objective, measurable fact. They are always subjectively meaningful interpretations. In other words, had CNN or ABC News been there to record the moment of divine revelation, there would have been nothing out of the ordinary (nothing miraculous) to show on the evening news — nothing other than what was coming out of someone’s mouth, or pen, or whatever folks wrote with back then. If we don’t understand this, we mock God and will surely miss what God is revealing and doing today. And we belittle God as ‘the Great Communicator’ if we argue that He spoke more clearly to goat herders and fisherman in the distant past, through dreams and intuitions, that He does today through evidence discovered by the community of scientists worldwide.

[***Please note - I have edited this comment to remove links to his blogs in accordance with my belief against teaching false doctrine - Timbo]

…I embrace the science-based history of the universe (the evolution of everything and everyone) that 97-98% of the world’s scientists agree on, because it offers a more undeniable real God, a more this-world realistic salvation, and more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control (the fruit of the Spirit) than I had when I was a young-earth creationist.

BTW… I’m a creatheist, not a theistic evolutionist.

God bless you!

~ Michael”

My Reply

Mr. Dowd, I am truly grateful to be receiving a direct reply from you. I am both surprised that you were able to find my blog and also that anyone with your speaking schedule to address me. I am sure you have faced your share of questions and concerns since your book has been published and I respect you for going out of your way to address this post.

I will begin by reiterating what I stated in the post you are referring to. That if you are to believe in the God of the Bible, you are unable to compromise on the concept of evolution. But in truth, it goes further than that. If you are to believe in the God of the Bible, you must go further than that to believe in the infallibility of scripture.

One of the reasons I believe in the things I do about God is because they come directly from Him. In the Old Testament phrases such as “thus saith the Lord,” “the word of the Lord came,” and “God said” are repeated over 3800 times.

2Timothy 3:16-17 says “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” This means that if you are going to believe in bible at all you have to believe that all the bible is given by “inspiration of God”. Though it was written by human hands, it came from God. Or it’s a worthless book and not worth reading at all.

Even to go beyond that, scripture says clearly 2 Peter 1:20-21 “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (Whenever the Bible talks about a prophet it’s not just talking about someone who tells the future, it’s talking about all the preachers and writers. So even when Moses was writing history, he was a prophet.) But this is exactly what you were talking about. It’s the difference between the persons interpretation, and whether or not God said it, and it says very clearly right here in this verse that no prophecy (nothing written in the bible) came about by any man’s interpretation, but by God.

There are other verses I could draw from, just another from the New Testament, is one that Paul shared in his description of his teaching. It comes from Galatians 1:11-12 “I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.”

To solidify the very eternality and importance of scripture, Jesus even spoke of it in the following two passages:

Matthew 5:18-19

I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Luke 16:17

It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.

There is much more that I can point to throughout scripture, but I think that very clearly cuts to the heart of the matter. That if you are going to believe in the God of the Bible, then you have no choice to believe that he is the divine author of the bible – cover to cover without interpretation on the part of the human writers.

The simple truth is to believe in the God of the Bible, is to believe that he authored the Bible, because that’s what the Bible says about the God it describes. The same way that, in order to believe in the God of the Bible you have to believe he literally created the world in six literal days and literally sustains and interacts with all that is in it, because that’s what the Bible says about the God it describes.

If, however, you do not believe those things, then you don’t believe in the God of the Bible.

If I tell you I’m eating an apple, you ask me what it looks like, and I tell you it’s straight, long, orange, with green leaves at one end, you’ll tell me I’m eating a carrot no matter what I want to call it.

What you’re describing is nothing like what the Bible talks about. You might be very well served to start there and begin a new process of discovery, or even re-evaluation.

One way or the other, you can’t have it both ways. Revelation 3:15-16 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

Again, I want to thank you a great deal for dropping me a line. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this with you and I look forward to any further discussion we may be able to continue in the future.