When we heard that evolutionary theologian Michael Dowd’s new book, Thank God for Evolution, has been garnering praise from everyone from Nobel laureates to U.S. senators, we wanted to catch up with him to speak about his recent work. A one-time fundamentalist Christian who later awakened to the “great story” of evolutionary history, Dowd is an evangelical minister who spends his time traveling nonstop across North America to preach the gospel of evolution and the marriage of science and religion. Together with his wife, science writer Connie Barlow, he has spent the last six years on a personal mission to introduce the ideas of evolutionary spirituality to traditional religious believers, atheists, and everyone in between.

In this conversation with WIE associate editor Carol Raphael, Dowd expounds on the many ways science and religion augment each other. With the enthusiasm of a preacher and the curiosity of a scientist, he dives into the heart of such universal concerns as God, morality, and the nature of evil, always from an evolutionary perspective. And he passionately calls for reimagining our personal and public lives in light of the truth of our place in an evolving cosmos. In Dowd’s spirited commentary, you’ll discover a powerful antidote to the current split between two of the most basic ways humans have made sense of life—reason and faith.

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