Naturalists From The United States

"Collapse is when a gradual downward trend in biophysical health and wellbeing goes into unstoppable decline; runaway, out of control; etc., it's... abrupt climate change... like 10,000 years of climate change in half a human lifetime. ...This is known as "The Great Acceleration" of Biospheric Collapse."

"Unstoppable collapse... These extinction level tipping points... thresholds that are already in the rear view mirror. Loss of the world's ice... I consider Dahr Jamail's The End of Ice... my favorite book on climate change. If you only read one book on climate change this year, read that..."

"Thanks to our fresh understanding of the deep-time face of grace, science and religion... are ushering each other into greatness."

"[L]et me slip into pride or arrogance, deception or inauthenticity, blame or resentment, or stingy, ungrateful self-centeredness, and I won't have to worry about burning in some otherworldly hell after I die. I'll be supping with Satan right here and now."

"Denial gets a bad wrap, because denial is instinctual."

"[W]hat a difference it makes to be groping our way forward in faith—in partnership with God, or, should you prefer less traditional terminology: trusting the Universe... Reality... Time."

"[M]y intent is to help you see what I see—science and religion can be mutually enriching."

"So long as religious and political leaders continue to ignore our evolutionary heritage, and thus do not put in place structures of internal and external support that can withstand the high dosages of that high status and power necessarily confer, then there will be no hope for a less calamitous future."

"Denial is the largely unconscious habit of thought whereby we refuse to accept the reality of things that are bad or upsetting—or that challenge our world view, our legacy, how we live, what is required of us, and/or our feelings of self-worth or superiority."

"Traditional religions have played crucial roles in fostering cooperation within each tribe, kingdom, and early nation—though not infrequently by provoking suspicion and enmity of those outside the group. ...[T]o fulfill their potentials in our postmodern world, each will have to harmonize its core doctrines with the evolutionary world view. ...[T]he evolutionary outlook bolsters their core teachings. Instead of an intrusion... a precious blessing."

"[W]e chose to display on our van both a Jesus fish and a Darwin fish—kissing. A retired biology professor... laughed, "Oh great! Now you piss everyone off!""

"Evolutionary versions of each religion... are emerging. ...[A]dherents of each religion have discovered ...Religious insights and perspectives freed from the narrowness of their time and place of origin are more comprehensive and grounded in measurable reality ...Evolution does not diminish religion; it expands its meaning and value globally."

"To agnostics, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers... you will find nothing here that you cannot wholeheartedly embrace as... rationally sound, mainstream scientific understanding of the Universe. ...[T]he vision of "evolutionary spirituality" presented here will benefit you and your loved ones without your needing to believe in anything otherworldly."

"You will... find here effective ways to talk about evolution to any friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors who are biblical literalists or young earth creationists."

"Discussing Thank God for Evolution! with those you care about will open new doors of possibility... and provide common ground where none existed before. This book is a perfect gift, not to convert others to your way of thinking but to converse... deeply and heartfully about those things that matter most."

"I dedicate this book to the glory of God."

"Connie was a self-described atheist, and her professional life was steeped in the sciences. My life was devoted to religion. Our union embraces both."

"[W]e were watching... Evolution: A Journey into Where We Came From and Where We're Going. ...episode ..."What About God?" It examined the struggle that conservative Christian college students face in trying to embrace both evolution and a pre-evolutionary interpretation of their faith. ...Connie ...said, "You need to be out there talking to those students. ...to show how an evolutionary understanding can enrich one's faith!" ...A few weeks later, after a frustrating day at work, I told her (not really serious...) "...I wish we could travel non-stop, teaching and preaching the Great Story ..." Her response... "I'd love to do that!""

"God's gift of science reveals that our faith traditions are... meaningful and grounded in undeniable reality... When we focus... on points of broad consensus rather than... legitimate disagreement, conflicts... lose their grip."

"[T]he fact that our Universe has been transforming along a discernible path for billions of years—the fact that creation was not a one-time event—is of little or no dispute. ...[T]his undeniable fact ...makes me want to shout from the mountaintops: "...The war is over!""

"Scientists... are moving away from a mechanistic... way of thinking and into an emergent, developmental worldview. Evolution... can be embraced as God glorifying and Christ edifying."

"The ancient religious paths are aching for coherence with the great discoveries born of the quest to understand this... Universe, the living world, our evolved selves, and... our innermost psyches."

"[F]or... over 99 percent of human history—there is little evidence that any culture understood developmental time and space... remotely similar to... today. Nevertheless, the big cosmological questions demanded answers, and so the answers came. ...Orally transmitted stories would evolve—until (and if!) they were written down and declared to be the unchanging revelation of God. When a story becomes scripture, it ceases to evolve."

"School textbooks, unfortunately, sometimes render science as dogmatic as any fundamentalist doctrine. In truth, science is quintessentially open to revision and discovery."

"Understanding the unwanted drives within us as having served our ancestors for millions of years is far more empowering than imagining that we are the way we are because of inner demons, or because the world’s first woman and man ate a forbidden apple a few thousand years ago. The path to freedom lies in appreciating one’s instincts, while taking steps to channel these powerful energies in ways that will serve our higher purposes."

"No otherworldly, unnatural paradise can compare with the utterly REAL heaven I now experience... every moment of every day, free of resentment, guilt, and unfinished business. ...By genuinely appreciating my instincts—thanks to the evolutionary world-view—and creating... structures of support, I now, by grace, experience an ease and freedom I've never known before regarding old habits, patterns, and temptations."

"May I continue to have the humility, strength, and peer encouragement to do what is necessary to remain in this state of grace. May I be a blessing to those around me. May I leave a positive evolutionary legacy, in service to God. And may the light of the living Christ shine within my heart and continue to guide my steps."

"Each and every human being who has ever brought anything of beauty, value, or importance into the world has done so only because... impregnated or in-spirited by some aspect of Beauty, Truth, Love, or other attributes of God. This... is beyond comprehension, beyond... force or free will. ...as if some power greater than ourselves is at work. ...There is a sense of having served, like Mary, as a vessel for something ...greater than our own capacities. ...[[[w:Peak experience|P]eak experience]]s are religious moments ...The story of Jesus's conception can remind us of such miracles in our ...lives."

"I wrote Thank God for Evolution! mostly to help religious believers from different traditions move toward an evidential worldview without having to abandon their tradition and join the atheist/humanist camp to do so. ...Few things are more important... than for... of religious believers... to embrace a science-based understanding of the world. ...Trying to understand reality without an evolutionary worldview is like trying to understand infection without microscopes or the structure of the universe without telescopes. It's... impossible."

"The stability of the biosphere has been in decline for centuries and in unstoppable collapse for decades. This "Great Acceleration" of technology and market-driven ecocide is an easily verifiable fact... [A]ll you have to do is Google "Great Acceleration.""

"The history of more than 80 previous boom and bust societies... reveals how and why Homo colossus is destined for near-term extinction."

"Homo colossus is Willam Catton's term for "industrial" humanity. That's where each of us uses 20-50 times the resources, and exudes 20-50 times the waste as Homo sapiens."

"At any measuere, absolutely everything that humans rely on... is now in precipitous free fall, unstoppable."

"[I]f you Google "Great Acceleration" you see all these wonderful charts... socioeconomic trends and earth system trends... everything going up. ...[W]e naturally think going up means better. Oh no, because the things... are ecocidal trends... and earth system collapse measures [respectively]."

"The 's health has been in decline for one or two centuries, and in runaway collapse... for decades... The Great Acceleration of Gaian Collapse."

"Any measurement, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide... We're losing all of the ice of the world... The oceans, the plankton, the corals, the fish, , oceanic dead zones and deoxygenation... and , the amount of soil, the fertility of the soil, the moisture of the soil, and permafrost is releasing tons of methane... unstoppable."

"I promise that this book will provide... an experience of science, and evolution specifically, that will fire your imagination, touch your heart, and lead you to a place of deep gratitude, awe, and reverence."

"I met Connie Barlow at a lecture... Connie was the author of four books, and two of them had "evolution" in their titles... She, too, was a long-time "epic of evolution" enthusiast. ...[H]er passion for sharing a sacred understanding of cosmic history was no less than mine. Seven months later I asked Connie to marry me."

"[M]any... believers have rejected evolution because... [it] has been depicted as random, meaningless, mechanistic, and Godless. The growing edge of evolutionary thinking... points to a very different understanding... a... realistic picture of divine creativity. ...a Universe astonishingly ...suited for life and ...consciousness."

"The message is laid out in Dowd’s book, "Thank God for Evolution"... Dowd presents evolution as a sacred epic of emerging complexity that can be seen as "14 billion years of grace." He sidesteps the question of whose grace... although the book’s title offers a hint. ...[H]e’s not talking about an intelligent designer. Instead, he exhorts his audience to supplant or complement their individual notions of God with sometimes-fuzzy concepts like “cosmic creativity.”"

"Denial is also the instinctual impulse to reject or discount information that calls into question our hopes, assumptions, or expectations about the future."

"Robin Wall Kimmerer shows how the factual, objective approach of science can be enriched by the ancient knowledge of the indigenous people. It is the way she captures beauty that I love the most-the images of giant cedars and wild strawberries, a forest in the rain and a meadow of fragrant sweetgrass will stay with you long after you read the last page."

"Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about the natural world from a place of such abundant passion that one can never quite see the world the same way after having seen it through her eyes."

"Even a wounded world is feeding us," writes the Indigenous plant scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. "Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the Earth gives me daily and I must return the gift."

"a lot of the problems that we face in terms of sustainability and environment lie at the juncture of nature and culture. So we can’t just rely on a single way of knowing that explicitly excludes values and ethics. That’s not going to move us forward."

"The idea of reciprocity, of recognizing that we humans do have gifts that we can give in return for all that has been given to us, is I think a really generative and creative way to be a human in the world. And some of our oldest teachings are saying that what does it mean to be an educated person? It means that you know what your gift is and how to give it, on behalf of the land and of the people, just like every single species has its own gift."

"we can’t have an awareness of the beauty of the world without also a tremendous awareness of the wounds; that we see the old-growth forest, and we also see the clear cut. We see the beautiful mountain, and we see it torn open for mountaintop removal. So one of the things that I continue to learn about and need to learn more about is the transformation of love to grief to even stronger love, and the interplay of love and grief that we feel for the world. And how to harness the power of those related impulses is something that I have had to learn."

"Few books have been more eagerly passed from hand to hand with delight in these last years than Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. She’s written, “Science polishes the gift of seeing; Indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.” An expert in moss, a bryologist, she describes mosses as “the coral reefs of the forest.” She opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life that we are used to naming and imagining as inanimate."

"science asks us to learn about organisms, traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them."

"what is the story that that being might share with us, if we knew how to listen as well as we know how to see?"