Thank God for Evolution, Part 2

The most engaging part of Michael Dowd's vision in Thank God for Evolution! is that God is immanent in the entire cosmos, creating and evolving everything. As Dowd frames the great purpose of our lives, "Humanity's Great Work is to further divine creative emergence -- God's will -- in ways lifegiving for the whole." This is close to a doctrine that is more Catholic than Calvinist, but I like it still: that we are meant to be co-creators with God in the further making of this world.

Dowd names his position Creatheism, which deliberately plays on creation-theism and creative-atheism. He treats all names for God as metaphors, but as nonetheless pointing to something real. He allows that his position has strong affinities with panentheism and with process theology, but is trying to express it in a way more palatable to both Biblical theists and atheists. We is trying to express a view of God both immanent and transcendent, while recognizing that the reality of God goes beyond any terms or metaphors we could come up with.