 on this episode of Skeptico. If you're talking about climate change, and you're talking about doing something about it. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't talk about doing something about it, Alex. I talk about doing something in your own heart to prepare for what's inevitable. I'm just saying, if we buy into what you're saying, isn't that the inevitable future? It's not 20 people getting together and deciding they're gonna live a different way. That isn't gonna be the future. You're wasting time by talking about something I don't give a shit about. I don't care about the climate sciences hoax. I don't care about where some scientists were. I don't care about that. That's the vibe I got from you from the beginning, Michael. And I get from so many people for the death cult environmentalists. They don't wanna waste their time listening to the other side of it. In my world, there's not another side. You're still calling yourself a Christian. I'm an evolutionary Christian. I'm a Christian nat- Oh, no, you're a Christian. You have that back and you haven't broken free from it. Alex, Alex. That's just who you are. I don't know what you're speaking about. I am a Christian naturalist. I have no supernatural beliefs or otherworldly beliefs at all. Zip, nada, nada one. I'm a Christian naturalist. So if you're interpreting- You have no supernatural beliefs. What do you talk about your relationship with Jesus? Wasn't that a supernatural relationship? Stay with us for Skeptico. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Sekaris. And as a lot of you know, I'm a big fan of the Skeptico Forum. I love it, because you all are so damn smart. I'm always learning stuff from you guys. Tape, for example, today's topic, global warming, or as a lot of people like to say, climate change. This is a topic that's been thoroughly hashed out on the Skeptico Forum really from all sides. And in a lot of ways, I'm super grateful for that because it's such a great Skeptico topic. I mean, it checks all the boxes. There is the science angle. I mean, what do we really know about climate? What do we know about these climate models? Are they reliable scientifically? Can we trust the scientist? And who is qualified to speak on climate science? These are all great questions that the kind of stuff that we love to dig into on Skeptico. But there's other angles to this topic that I think are just so fascinating again if we kind of broaden the lens. There is the political, dare I say, conspiratorial aspect of climate. And we certainly get into a lot of that stuff on this show. And I think we can handle it on this topic as well. I mean, what would it mean in terms of policy change if we were to look at the science one way versus if we were to look at it another way? And then ultimately, who are the stakeholders behind this and what kind of power are they wielding? That's another conspiratorial kind of part of this question. And then finally, I guess the third box that I love to check on this is the issue of spirituality. And it rarely gets discussed when it comes to climate change. But to me, it seems central to the debate. Does God need our help to save her planet? Is there an evil hand of manipulation behind this? Is it either, quote unquote, on the big oil shills who are pumping the brakes on climate change? Or is it, quote unquote, the death cult environmentalists who are pushing for action at all costs? So there's a lot, lot, lot I feel like to talk about on this issue, even though it seems like it's covered so many times, I think there's so many fresh perspectives to bring to it. And wouldn't you know, we have a guest who can do that for us. Michael Doud is here. Let me give you a little bit of his background from the bio that Michael sent me. Reverend Michael Doud is a best-selling echo theologian, TEDx speaker and pro-future evangelist, whose work has been featured in the New York Times, LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Discovery Television and other television shows, his book, Thank God for Evolution. I have it up there on the screen. It was endorsed by sixth Nobel Prize-winning scientist and I also am showing up there a video series that he's done, which we'll be playing some clips from. So Michael, it is super awesome and interesting to have you on Skeptico. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Alex. It's a joy to be here. Well, great. You know, and as we were just chatting about a minute ago, there's quite a little story behind us getting together here and the discussion we've had. Maybe you wanna fill folks in a little bit on how we came together and what we're hoping to do. I kind of laid out my agenda, but I wanna make sure that's kind of in sync with where you'd like to take things. Cool, well, I'm happy to. So Rick Archer, our mutual friend and colleague, was the one that I think recommended me to you or you to me, I forget. But in any case, he got us in touch with each other and then of course I went on and looked at a lot of your past episodes and saw what you do. And at first I thought, well, it doesn't look like a good fit because I'm really not that interested in some of the topics that you and your guests are quite passionate about and understandably so. My focus has been for the last eight, well, the last 30 years, really the universe story, the epoch of evolution, the history of everyone and everything that comes to us through global collective intelligence. That is the entire worldwide community of not just scientists, but scientists, philosophers, theologians and others. But basically it's evidence grounded, our history of human evolution or actually cosmic evolution, life evolution, biological life evolution and human evolution as one modern day creation story. So I've been doing that for 30 years, actually 35 years I guess. And then in the last seven years, I've really taken on understanding the rise and fall of civilizations, ecology especially, the ecological worldview and climate change, but not just climate change, really in the last few years abrupt climate change, which is quite different. And so yeah, that's my passion. Basically we're science, inspiration and sustainability intersect. And the reason that I'm an ecotheologian is for me, God is a sacred name, a proper name and high vow name, you could say a mythic name for reality. And reality is telling us some pretty amazing and sobering things. And so yeah, look forward to having our conversation. Okay, great, no, so am I. And there was some good, as we're joking about, some good tension, familiar to anyone who's listened to this show, we have to get to the edge of things and people don't always agree with each other and that's okay as long as it's played out in a way that kind of informs the discussion, I think that's terrific. And that's been the case so far. You just mentioned this ecotheologian thing and I'm showing an image of you and ecology is the new theology. And what I thought I'd do is an additional way to introduce where you're coming from is to play a clip from this video series and here is the trailer to that video series. Let me play that for folks. So this notion of ecology as the heart of theology, I call it ecotheism. It's not about believing in anything. Half of religion is gagged and tied in the trunk and the other half of religion are in the back seat cheering on the psychopathic politicians that are driving us over the cliff. You've got thousands, maybe millions of people that are debating whether or not God exists so whether or not God is real when the one real God, namely reality, personified or not, we've been living out of right relationship to and we are now about to experience consequences of biblical proportion. So it's very, very nicely done. I gotta give you a ton of credit. It looks beautiful, well shot and there's many parts to it, kind of a lecture series but again, nicely done. What would you, anything to add to that trailer that I showed there? Just the fact that it's a eight session, it's two parts. Part one is coming home to reality which is four 20 minute sessions and then part two is also four 20 minute sessions that's titled A Practical Wisdom and it's designed for secular and religious study groups. Basically, again, it focuses on what I call the sacred side of science but how to stay inspired in challenging times is sort of the heart of it as well. Okay, great. So here's what I thought we'd do in this time we have together and I kind of laid it out at the beginning but let's go over this because I thought we'd kind of break this down along the three lines that I just mentioned. The science of it, the politics of it and then the spirituality of it and I have again some clips from your video and then I have basically just a couple of things that I've done, not clips, but just parts that I did. So that sounds okay. Sounds great. So where I thought I'd start rather than start with the science because that's where everybody starts with is to start with the politics of global warming and as a way to kind of segue into that why don't I play another clip from your video series and then I'll see if you think this kind of captures where you're coming from. So here it goes. So let's take a look at what is reality telling us and this again is the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, best case and medium case scenarios. Worst case scenario is we go extinct. There'll be bigger storms, bigger droughts, bigger growing deserts, more intense wildfires and more wildfires and shifts in where we can live and grow food, habitability and agriculture. This is now inevitable. We can't avoid some level of this. Sea level will continue to rise 25 to 40 feet and this is true if every human being went extinct tonight. We're gonna go back to firewood and muscle power and that's what we'll be in the future. Even if we have significant technologies, they will be much lower scale as the seas rise. Population will shrink to a half a billion or less due to drought, famine, war and living in a post-anabatic age. Okay, so obviously I clipped some of the parts out there. That segment of the video is a 20 minute segment but do you think we kind of captured accurately there your read of that? Yeah, what I do prior to that, just so if you folks know the context is I paint out a hundred year timeline, the history of the universe, 13.82 billion years in a hundred years at that scale, Homo sapiens have been around for the last day, the last 24 hours, roughly the last 100,000 years. And of that, we lived more or less sustainably to speak mythically, we lived in the garden that is we lived as other animals do and our instincts guided us to do the right thing that is the things that led to our survival and reproduction. And then the last half hours when we started seeing anthropocentrism, human centeredness where it's all about us, we don't care about any other species, it's all about us. And it turns out anthropocentrism is self-destructive. And so then I talk about, okay, here's what's been happening. And then I say, now, what can we project out? What can we say confidently is the next minute, the next 250 years is on the cosmic century timeline every minute is 250 years. What can we count on? That's either highly likely or inevitable in the next 250 years. And so that was the beginning of that section. And yeah. Okay, so great. And you're kind of getting into some of the science there which is awesome, you know, your understanding of the science and the IPCC's understanding of the science, which is great. And I want to dive into that and we'll talk about that more, but I do want to kind of shift gears to the political part for a second. And I guess the question I'd have for you is, if someone looked at the science and came to the same conclusions that you have there in that video, what laws, what policies would you see being necessary to be enacted in order to support the natural conclusions of that science? And I guess the following, that's kind of a lead in to the question, would you see this as being some kind of normal, political process inside of our existing democracy, inside of the United States Constitution? Or do you think because this is a global issue, we'd have to transcend that? Or do you think because everyone might not go along with it, we'd have to transcend that? How do you feel about that? Well, it's certainly a legitimate and good question, but it's not one that I have a lot to offer because what I tend to do is step back, like I said, the last seven and a half years, I've been looking at the history of politics, like how has polity, how has governmental structures, how have humans in groups large enough to need government or to need some form of governance over the last 7,000 years, how has that worked? And it turns out that in human-centered cultures, that is anthropocentric cultures, the politics almost always becomes dysfunctional because power groups tend to become corrupt and the more power they have, the easier and more corrupt they can become. And so I don't hold out any hope, zero, like zero on a scale of zero to 10, I hold out no hope whatsoever that our political systems can solve or even helpfully respond to abrupt climate change. Right, so I guess that's what I'm getting at and I'm glad you're being frank about it. So constitution out the window, democracy more or less. Oh no, it's not so much out the window, constitutions become irrelevant. I don't wanna say constitutions, our constitution, our United States constitution, our current system of governance, democracy, last time around, I didn't vote for Trump, but 50% of people voted for Trump and Trump became president and there was screaming, crying in the streets, gnashing of teeth, a major uprising, but we went ahead and stuck it out with the guy who was elected president. Well that's what happened on the liberal, that's what happened on the liberal end of the spectrum. There was a hell of a lot of people who were celebrating. Right on. And so my point is, let's say this comes down to another kind of election and people aren't swayed by, we're gonna get into the science, but let's say people aren't swayed by the science. They go, yeah, I don't really think so. Then what do we do? Do we abide by the democratic system in our country? What do we do on an international basis? Let me, yeah, so this is gonna be a curve ball, I suspect. There's nothing we can do. Abrupt climate change means that climate change that throughout Earth's history usually took between 1,000 and 10,000 years is happening on a scale of one human lifetime. There is nothing we can do. If seven billion people woke up tonight, all convinced to do the same good thing, it wouldn't be enough because the Arctic is already wigging out. In other words, we've already tipped certain tipping points that there's nothing politically that we can do. There's nothing economic. There has never been in the history of humanity a market-based system that didn't self-implode, that didn't self-destruct, that didn't become ecocidal because market-based systems treat primary reality, that is the air, water, soil, life upon which we depend, not as primary as it needs to be. Every sustainable culture did that. They treat it as merely resources for our benefit and a place for our waste. That is unsustainable, by definition. So, I don't see it. Go ahead. I just don't see, I mean, first of all, I have no opinion. For example, I haven't watched anything on the right or on the left. I've watched nothing about the so-called impeachment process that's going on. Well, neither have I, but I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is a reality here that I think is so often left out of this discussion. And that is that if you're talking about climate change and you're talking about doing something about it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't talk about doing something about it, Alex. I talk about doing something in your own heart to prepare for what's inevitable, except what's inevitable, and then honor your grief, if you have grief, some people don't have that, and then invest in what is pro-future and soul-nourishing. I do not think there's anything we can do to stop climate change. Not just- Okay, okay, but there's a mix. There's a certain crossover in what you said, okay? So one, two, this is extremely apocalyptic for, and that's okay. If that's what it is, that's what it is. But then I don't necessarily get the shift to prepare for a future. You're saying there is no future, and I'm saying the reality, the political reality, the policy reality, the stakeholder analysis reality of what you're saying, we've seen it before. It leads to people taking to the streets and revolting and grab your M16 and every person for themselves, because you're talking about a 90% reduction in population, we have to be realistic. I mean, that's where I see a disconnect with sometimes what you say. Person of the heart and faith, prepare for your planter seeds in your garden. No, it's gonna be whoever has the guns and drives around in trucks and comes and takes your shit. I mean, we know what chaos at that level looks like. Isn't that where we're heading for heading towards the apocalypse? First of all, there have been over 100 apocalypses in the last 7,000 years. We know of about 120 civilizations that have become great and on their way up when the economy's expanding, when there are more than enough resources, life is good, liberal, quote unquote, values tend to predominate. Then there's a tipping point, meaning that basically you go into overshoot. You have overshot the carrying capacity of your base. And then on the way down, which it usually takes about half the time, typically a century or two to decline before you get back to another dark age. And so on the down slope, it feels like apocalypse every single time or virtually every single time. So I don't know how exactly our society will unravel about it. What I do know is that if survival is your issue, like if being alive no matter what is like what it's all about for you, I invite you to consider the possibility that having 20 people who know and love you and care about you is gonna be a hell of a lot more important than having 20 guns. Okay, brother, but you gotta understand how that message sounds. I mean, it just doesn't play well. It plays way over on the kind of extremist side. And I would pull it back to just some realities like you're talking about, okay? I played out one reality, whereas it's not 20 people all loving each other in a condom. No, I don't mean love, I don't mean this kind of... Hold on, well just let me, because it's a crazy scenario that we're playing out anyway. But it's not people getting together to form community and make things, because at that level, it's about, we've seen it in the movies, you know, a bunch of guys getting together with guns driving around, see you as water, see you as food, and put the gun to their head and say, give it to me and give me the women and give me whatever, it's chaos. And at a national level, we know what that looks like, because we lived through it. It's like North Korea, you don't wanna go along with our plan, boom, here's a bomb on you. China, you don't wanna go along with our plan. Here's a bomb on you. Isn't that from a political standpoint? I'm not trying to be tricky or trying to be super complex, futuristic. I'm just saying, if we buy into what you're saying, isn't that the inevitable future? It's not 20 people getting together and deciding they're gonna live a different way. That isn't gonna be the future. So I'm going to say, this is my last political comment. And I warned you, I was not interested in talking about politics, because I am neither liberal nor conservative. I'm both in different ways. Any evolutionary, anybody who gets evolution has to embrace both a conserving element, DNA is conservative if it's anything, and a more expansive element. So I'm neither of those. So this is the last thing I'll say on this. You've watched too many movies and you haven't read enough history, because when you look at how civilizations have collapsed, we actually have, there are people that have spent their entire lifetime, Arnold Toynbee, Oswald Spengler, Gambitista Vico. These are people who have studied side by side by side by side, all these different civilizations and empires, Sir John Glob, and how these contract and collapse. And we know a lot about how that happens. And Mad Max is never the scenario. You've watched too many, let me finish, let me finish, please. What we know is that things will collapse differently in thousands of different places in thousands of different ways. It won't happen in any one way. And you and I can't even fathom some of the things that we just couldn't imagine, because it'll be new to this generation, because previous generation didn't have atom bombs and machine guns and all the shit that we've got. So, is some of what you're describing gonna happen? You bet, absolutely. But there will be communities that respond differently. I don't know about that. I don't, it's not that I don't care about it. Cause I've got a daughter who's due to give birth in May. I've also got a nine year old granddaughter. I've got flesh in the game in terms of the future. But I don't believe that my children will die much younger than they normally would have. Because I believe that within the next 20 years, we're going to see major, major famine, probably wiping out 70 to 90% of the human population. So, anything you want to talk about in terms of- No, no, I'm ready. I was just giving her a pause. Hold on. Cause religion and the science and the spirituality, I'm game for. Not interested in talking about the politics anymore. There you go, as you see on the screen. Let's move on. The science of global warming. Some people call it climate change. So, you've laid out your position. Let me try as succinctly as possible to lay out my position in three parts, if you will. So, the first part would be that the stakes, as we were just talking about, and that's why I started with politics. I am extremely apolitical like you are. I never talked about left, right. I think it's a completely ridiculous way to suggest that that paradigm has any reality at all on so many different levels. But there is a reality to that and we just talked about it. The reality is that the stakes are very, very high. So, we gotta make damn sure we get it right. I mean, we are facing species threatening environmental issues on a number of fronts. We're in total agreement on that. And I understand that action along the lines of what you're talking about is one possibility. Non-action is an option, but it's really not an option. We are going to do something. We're going to do something in the next five years, 10 years, 20 years. And the point is, are we gonna do the right thing or the wrong thing? So, when I get to the science thing, the first thing I wanna do is I wanna say, we've gotta double check everything, verify that it's true. And along those same lines, I'm extremely leery of science that comes from folks who've lied to me in the past. So, I look at the 97% consensus thing that was- Yeah, it's actually closer to 99%. Now, that was actually seven years ago when the 97% thing. If you look at how many papers actually written by climate scientists in the last six years, it's about 99%. Okay, well, we could get into that. I don't think it's gonna be fruitful to dig into that. Too far, but we can if you want to. Because I did a whole show with Rick on that. And Rick was so insistent on the consensus thing. And I said, Rick, you're gonna look foolish here because you're gonna dig into it and you're gonna see that it's fake science. And at the end of the day, Rick looked into it and he had to admit on this show, I can play you the clip that it's fake science. The 97% consensus, get the college students, get my own interns to go and do the summations on this research was fake science. Not to say that there aren't other stats out there that give different consensus marks. But my point, again, remember is that we gotta be really careful because there's fake data out there, fake science out there. We have climate gate where the whole thing was how do we cook the books? How do we change the data? Alex, Alex, we have a limited amount of time. You're wasting time by talking about something I don't give a shit about. I don't care about the climate sciences hoax. I don't care about where some scientists were. I don't care about that. I'm looking at Paul Beckwith and Nicholas Humphrey, meteorologist Nick Humphrey and Paul Beckwith. Those are the kind of people I go to at Peter Waddams in terms of the Arctic. I pay attention to a select understanding of the data that's incontrovertible, that nobody is arguing with, nobody anywhere is arguing with. And it's about abrupt climate change. Get that word, abrupt climate change. I can go into the details if you want me to, but I'm not interested in debating and trying to defend the liberal consensus. It ain't gonna happen, so you're wasting my time. Well, you know, that's the vibe. Seriously, Alex, seriously. But that's the vibe I got from you from the beginning, Michael. And I get from so many people who's the death cult environmentalist. They don't wanna waste their time listening to the other side of it. I love the way you said that right there. There is no, in my world, what I pay attention to, there's not another side in terms of another. There's always another side, Michael. That's the point. Okay, Alex, Alex, Alex. Okay, you promised me that you would relate to me in things that I was interested in. We're not doing that. I am not going to debate, I am not listening to me. I'm not going to debate. I would relate to you in things that you're interested in. I never said that. I've represented- Alex, I told you I would not discuss and was not interested, and I'm not prepared to defend because I don't give a poop about it, the kind of things that you have done with other guests such as what you just put on the screen. I'm not interested. So if you want me to continue in this conversation, you yourself said that if you're not pleased, you can get off anytime. If you want to do that, I invite you to ask me about the religion around the spirituality, about responding. I will not try to defend the stuff you very capably can attack. Ain't interested in it. Okay, I will move on. But why do you think if I can capably attack or bring up the data points in your presentation on climate change, your data point on sea level rise, if I can bring up a noted climatologist who doesn't agree with you, why is that not relevant to this discussion? Because I could bring up 99 who do agree with me. For example, John Englender is a friend of mine. He's a colleague. But hold on. John Englender wrote is the former president of the Jacques Cousteau Society. He will also tell you as virtually anybody who deals with the ocean's will that even if all human beings went extinct tonight, the oceans would still rise considerably, somewhere between 20 and 50 feet. Regardless of what we do, even if we took all the political action. But this is not, I'm not gonna debate the science with you because the evidence to my mind is clear. Can you show one or two or three or four or five respected climatologists who have a different opinion? Of course, that doesn't make any difference to me. I go with where the majority and where the evidence, when I look at the evidence, my wife is a science writer. She's written five science books. I go with what global collective intelligence seems to be saying. It never has to be a hundred percent. So the fact that you've got some dissenters and some convincing ones, at least to you and to your followers, that's cool, okay, whatever. I'm interested in how we adapt to what is now in my estimation, unavoidable. But do you realize how that plays, Michael, because one of the things that's unavoidable is that people will be in denial. Someone says I'm not interested in the data that you have. I'm not interested in discussing it. I'm only interested in spewing my apocalyptic future. But that's okay. We will move on. I am happy to expedite the conversation and move on to the spiritual part. So what's the point? But your sarcasm, the bitingness of your tone is uncalled for. I warned you in three emails that I gave you the range of things that I would love to discuss with you and the things that I was looking for. And I gave you a clear understanding that we're having a discussion, a debate from the beginning. We're not having a debate. I'm not interested. I don't debate. I don't debate anybody. Period. End of story. I discuss what I'm knowledgeable about, let me finish. I discuss what I'm knowledgeable about, what I have passion and energy and commitment to. And it doesn't happen to be the politics and it doesn't happen to be defending the science. So find other guests to debate that. It's great that you do that. It's not where I go. It's not what I'm interested in. If you're interested in how to stay inspired and hard- You're doing it all over the place. What's that? You're doing it all over the place. I mean, I don't understand. Again, I don't understand people like you who come on and debate and then say- I'm not debating. I will not debate you. I'm not debating. So you can call it whatever you want. Dialoging, having a conversation. I don't care what you have it. What you call it. You're presenting your position. I'm presenting my position. I am happy to announce- No, no, no. That's not what I, okay. I've interviewed over 120 people where I've been the podcast host and I interview people. And in every single one of them, my 2014 series, The Future is Calling us to Greatness, where I interviewed 56 of the world's top experts on climate and sustainability and a spattering of spiritual leaders. And then the one I'm doing now, post-doom conversations. So people can learn about that on postdoom.com. Every single one of those, I listen, I'm trying to get my guest, the person I'm talking to, to share how they think, how they feel, how they see the world. No, you just like to talk to people who agree with you. You just like to talk to people who agree with you. I get it. I get those kind of people all the time. Do you have any idea over 120 people? All these people don't agree with me. They don't need to, because it's not a debate. I want them to share their thing and I engage with them, but not from a debating stance. And I refuse to be- Why don't you get Judith Curry? Why don't you get Dr. Judith Curry from Georgia Tech on your show? That would be an interesting conversation. I'd like to hear your dialogue with her. She's not a post-doom worldview. I'm not interested. I interview people on post-doom. Alex, if you wanna have a conversation with me, let's have a conversation. If you continue in this debate format, I'm gonna hang up. Michael, you are free to click the end button at any time. No one is chaining you to this discussion. I know, and then you'll trash me, which is fine, because I've seen you do that, but I'm not interested. I wanna have a conversation. Okay, good. I'm glad you said something. Back that up. When have I trashed someone? When have I trashed someone off the mic? When have I hung up on a conversation with me? I have never seen that. I have never heard that. But didn't you just say that? I apologize for giving that impression. I have never seen that. I got that only because of the way that we've related in emails, but I've never seen or experienced you doing that. Okay, I've never done that, but that's okay. So we'll talk about spirituality of global warming. That I'd love to do. Well, we'll see. And anything related to post-doom, like how to stay inspired in contracting times because there are certain things that are, see, this is the thing. If you wanna talk about the science, what I'm gonna talk about is the science of overshoot, the science of every society for which we have evidence that has gone into ecological overshoot, contracts and collapses, and it's inevitable. So that I'm real knowledgeable about, and I'm happy to talk about it, but global warming is one symptom of overshoot. There's about 20 other symptoms of overshoot that we could talk about. That's why I'm not interested in talking about too specified an area, because let's talk about all the other aspects of overshoot. William Catton's book, Overshoot, is the most important book I've ever read in my life. Overshoot, ecological basis, revolutionary change. I can't recommend it too high. So Michael, you describe yourself as an eco-theologian. Now, reading your bio, I know you have an extensive background with Christianity, born again. You went to seminary, ordained minister, but maybe you wanna tell us more about your spiritual background. As a Christian, you talk less about Jesus. I've never heard you mention Jesus ever. I mean, where does the Jesus thing factor into your thing and how would Christians understand your spirituality? Well, it's kind of hard to say what would Christians say because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of Christian churches and they're all over the map. Some of them treat science and evidence a whole lot more authoritative than the Bible. Some treat mythic language the way I treat mythic language that is saying something symbolically true, poetically, metaphorically true about the nature of reality, but they do it in poetry and they do it, and they're not poetry. They do it in symbol, which is that symbolic language. So I interpret- Where do you come down on the historical Jesus? Is there historical Jesus, Christ consciousness? What is your relationship? I don't tend to use consciousness a whole lot because for me, every life form has some form of consciousness. So I'm, you know, what I will say is that the all of the world's religions have been evolving the last several thousand years, including Christianity, in a context where the culture already is out of right relationship to God, out of right relationship to reality. That is, it's been human centered. And so these cultures, these religions have helped people to sort of cope with that. They're coping mechanisms, but in healthy for the first 97% of human history, religions were the control mechanism, not the coping mechanism. So they basically insisted that the future was not compromised by the present. And so I'm trying to, because I am a Christian, I try to interpret the Christian story in terms of how this can be understood in ways that are ecologically and scientifically factual, not merely spiritually inspiring. Okay, but I've asked you a couple of times. So for example, the Trinity. I don't experience the Trinity. Do you believe in the historical Jesus? Do you believe, who was Jesus as a historical figure? Was he the Son of God? Was he the Redeemer? Does everyone who seeks salvation have to go through Jesus? These are fair questions. I mean, if you were in tower, you wear the trappings, you go by Reverend Michael Dowd. These are fair questions to ask a Christian. Totally fair questions to ask a Christian. I interpret all of those only in light of Christ, not just the person Jesus, but the mythic Christ, the stories built around him, as a personification, a deification of the future. The first person of the Trinity is a deification of the past. The second person of the Trinity, the Savior, the Messiah, all that, it's all about the future. And the third person as the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Hebrews, you didn't need to believe in the Spirit. The wind and the breath personified, deified. The only place you can experience wind and breath is in the present. So yes, the only way that humans can save ourselves, once we exited out of the garden, that is once we left the way we were living for the first 97% of human history, it went on a human-centered path, we can't save ourselves. We were on that path 7,000, 6,000, whatever, years ago, that led right to here, which is hell, this world hell. And only the future can save us. By making the future our Lord is the only hope of redemption, and that's true even if we go extinct. That is the only hope of us being redeemed in the body of life. So yes, for me, Christ is the future personified, the voice and the heart of the future. The future is my Lord. Okay, so six or 7,000 years ago, there was a garden. And no, no, no, no, no, no, Alex, Alex, metaphor. The garden symbolizes humanity living in a mutually enhancing relationship with the rest of the body of life, with reality. What was the six or 7,000 years reference? Oh, human-centeredness, anthropocentr... What Daniel Quinn calls totalitarian agriculture. Once we start creating forms of agriculture, that it's all about us, then we get really, really good at having things work out best for us over time, because our brains and our hands, our tool-making ability and our symbolic brains. And then once you start mining metals, you get into this arms race. So it seems to me, it's pretty inevitable from about six, seven, maybe 8,000 years ago, once we see city-based human-centered cultures that always overshoot the carrying capacity, that is they use more resources and create more waste so they end up dying over time. And so that pattern, the rise and fall, booms and busts of civilization is inevitable until or unless we make the future our primary guiding principle, that is the seventh generation, that whole idea of acting with the future as the judge in the present, that's not just a good idea to do otherwise as evil. So I interpret the Christian story and all the Christian doctrinal language, other traditions too, from this grounded ecological evolutionary worldview. So the six or 7,000 years, a lot of people tie that to biblical people, people who are tied to the Bible as holy scripture, tie that back to the garden kind of thing. But you aren't making any connection, you're just saying it just so happens that the six or 7,000 years that Christians like to tie back to the origin story, it's just coincidence that that ties to this agriculture. Well, really, yeah, I mean, when you start seeing city-based civilizations it's like six or 7,000 years ago. But no connection to the Bible, that's my question. There's no connection to the Bible. No, the Bible is mythic literature, deep inspiring. Did Jesus walk on the earth and was he the son of God? I have no fucking idea. You have no fucking idea. Jesus walked on the earth, probably, yes. Could it be, I mean, there's some people, some scholars actually, that have said that Jesus and Buddha are actually mythic figures rather than actually flesh and blood. I suspect they were living beings. I suspect Jesus of Nazareth was a human being who lived in exemplary like relationship and right relationship to reality and everybody around him was like, do you know anybody I got, you know. So- Is he the only son of God? Depends on if you mean that literally or whether you mean that metaphorically. If you mean that literally, no, of course not. Why, of course not because a lot of Christians- Because all species are children of God. All species are sons and daughters of God. All humans are sons and daughters of God. So any special relationship between Jesus and God, any special different relationship between my relationship? That's like saying is there any special relationship between the future and the past? Yes, there's a special relationship. They're one and the same. You can't honor the future and be a blessing to the future by dishonoring the past. So of course I'm not going to try to discuss fundamentalist theology with you because I'm not interested, that's not where I'm at. I speak in moderate to liberal Christian, Buddhist, Unitarian, Unity, Church of Religious Science. I speak in every place except biblical fundamentalist settings because it takes a courageous evangelical to invite me in. It takes an evangelical pastor who wants to move their congregation in accepting evolution and ecology as divinely revelatory. And that's few and far between. It only happens every few years. So of the 3,000 or close to 3,000 churches or organizations where I've spoken in the last 18 years, I think six of them have been fundamentalist or evangelical, it's pretty rare. Yeah, I don't identify with those labels because I'm not a Christian, I'm not religious. But what about your transformation? You were born again, right? At some point you were probably, I don't know, were you more kind of what you would tag? I was raised Catholic, went through Catholic school. For most Catholics, evolution isn't a big deal. They just sort of accept it as the current pope does. I had a born again experience and by born again what I mean is I had a metanoia, a conversion experience in my late teenage years in Berlin, Germany. And that was because I was struggling with drug alcohol and sex addiction. And I realized that I was taking myself to hell, basically. And so I had this profound mountaintop experience outside of Frankfurt, Germany, came off the mountain, literally in the next Sunday I went to church and they were showing this Billy Graham film at this Pentecostal Assemblies of God Church. And at the end of the film, which was one of these grab your heart films, the minister asked, is there anybody want to come down to the altar and accept Jesus as your personal organ savior? Man, I'm practically running down the altar. And I had a conversion experience, meaning I turned my life over to the care of reality, God, the universe. And for me, Christ was always the heart and soul of reality. And so I then read the Bible straight through twice. I went to an Assemblies of God College and ended up pastoring three United Church of Christ churches, although one of them, the first one was also a Baptist church, went to a Baptist seminary. And then pastored three churches and then I've done environmental sustainability and community organizing work since then. And then the last 18 years traveling around with my life. The reason I wanted to go through your personal kind of Christian orientation, spiritual orientation is because I think it's interesting. I think it's interesting to people who identify as Christian again, because I'm not, I don't think it makes a lot of sense I think there's a lot of cultish aspects to the Christian religion. I was brought up in the Greek Orthodox tradition and thinking back and the process of really kind of unraveling how that works and the symbolism and the icon worshiping and the, you know, go up and kiss the priest's hand while he puts a piece of bread in your thing. I think it's incredibly just destructive or potentially destructive on so many levels. And I just wanted people to understand because you do kind of front it out there pretty much and you got the green shirt on and the collar. Yeah, well, there's a history to that. I mean, I'm committed to the greening of religion that is religion coming home to reality. And again, I used the word God in reality interchangeably. God is a mythic name of reality and reality could say is a secular name for God. Any God that doesn't include the voice of what reality is telling us is impotent. The problem is every religion that is book based that is grounded in written human language becomes that language often becomes idolatrous. That is, I call it idolatry of the written word, idolatry of the otherworldly and idolatry of beliefs. And those are almost inevitable in written cultures. Once you have literacy that escapes the priesthood so it then becomes part of the common people and literacy becomes sort of the norm and culture. Religions that emerge and flower in those kinds of cultures almost always fall victim to idolatry of the written word. Because then what happens is see in oral cultures when you just got oral stories about the nature of what's real and what's important, those stories can evolve and shift and change over time. But once you write them down, then it becomes the authoritative word of God. And the only thing it can change is the interpretations. And so then as reality shifts, as the environment and climate and culture and civilizations and all that stuff shift, you've got these cultures that are going back to these ancient texts as if reality cares more about picking up sticks on the Sabbath, then reality cares about things that are current today like global warming. So I don't see any hope of any religions of the book surviving this what you call apocalypse. I don't. This bottleneck, this overshoot correction where we come back into the carrying capacity of the living world. I don't see any of the religions of the book surviving that in their current form. They can survive once ecology once again becomes the heart of their theology. That's why I'm espousing that and that's why I've got that green color. Yeah, but that's how I was saying, Michael, you're still right in the middle of it. You're still calling yourself a Christian. You're still tapping into a Christian. I'm an evolutionary Christian. I'm a Christian. You're still now you're a Christian. I'm a Christian. But you haven't broken free from it. Alex, Alex. It's just who you are. I don't know. I am a Christian naturalist. I have no supernatural beliefs or otherworldly beliefs at all. Zip, nada, nada one. I'm a Christian naturalist. So if you're interpreting- You have no supernatural beliefs. What are you talking about? Your relationship with Jesus. Wasn't that a supernatural relationship? Is the future supernatural? I said I have a personal relationship. We went through your whole thing with Jesus. Isn't that supernatural? Oh, I had supernatural beliefs back then. Absolutely. So then how do you view today? 1988. 1988, I read Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, or not a priest, but a Catholic monk, and he called himself a geologian. He was one of the most significant ecological and evolutionary thinkers of the 20th century. And he and Brian Swim wrote a number of books. The universe story was the one they co-authored. But when I encountered Thomas Berry's work in 1988, I, as well as Gene Marshall and a few others, my supernaturalism just fell away because a naturalistic reinterpretation of all the Christian, not just Christian, all the myths and religions just makes so much more sense. So here's my creed in a nutshell. I think you may not watch the thing, but my faith statement, as it were, in a nutshell, the shortest possible form that I can put it, is this. Reality is my God. That is reality is my ultimate commitment. Reality is my God. Evidence is my scripture. That is evidence is authoritative. In terms of what reality is, sure. So reality is my God. Evidence is my scripture. Big history or the epic of evolution, that is the history of everyone and everything that science gives us, is my creation story. Ecology is my theology. Integrity, and what I mean by integrity are the practices and exercises that help me live and write relationship to reality. So integrity is my spirituality. So reality is my God. Evidence is my scripture. The epic of evolution is my creation story. Ecology is my theology. Integrity is my spiritual path. And fostering accountability to the future is my mission. And that's my faith statement. That's the kind of Christian I am, not the kind of Christian you're imagining. Well, it doesn't sound like you're a Christian at all if you don't believe in Christ. I don't need to believe. We can know now. That's the thing. It's not about beliefs. We're beyond, remember the three idolatries? Written word, idolatry of the otherworldly and idolatry of beliefs. Idolatry of beliefs is where we think what religion is about is beliefs. Religion was never about beliefs in sustainable cultures and religion was always about beliefs in unsustainable cultures. We now don't need to believe. We can experience and know that if we don't honor the future first, as Lord, we will go extinct. If we don't honor the wisdom of the past, history and evolution, then we're gonna not have the guidance in the present for how to be a blessing to the future. So I'm not gonna debate whether I'm a Christian or not. I'm this kind of Christian, because you're all over the board, buddy. You're all over the board. You're talking about a spiritual awakening, a born again experience. I held your feet to the fire on whether Jesus existed. You said yes. And then you wind up saying, well, I don't believe in anything supernatural. You don't believe in anything. Okay, so here, let me try to paint this out. I had a born again experience in 1981. I was a disciple. I don't accept that as supernatural. I was very supernatural. But you don't accept it as supernatural today, Michael. What difference does it make if you had some experience in the past that you no longer accept it? I'm simply trying to, Alex, can you allow me to just share my story? You've given, I've given you plenty of time to share your ridiculous, but you're interpreting it as if there's something wrong. I had a change of how I interpret going from supernatural. Then why are you front yourself as a Christian and wearing the collar and doing all that stuff? You're not a Christian. You don't believe in Jesus. You don't believe in spiritual. Do you realize that there are thousands and probably tens of thousands of liberal Christian churches that don't believe anything like you are characterizing? There's nothing sillier than someone who's not a Christian attacking someone else for not being a true Christian because they think what Christians are are biblical fundamentalists. You got the wrong guy, dude. Trust me. I speak, I've spoken to close to 3,000 churches. Maybe six of them are fundamentalist evangelical. All the rest of them don't believe, it's not about beliefism. Liberal Christians are not the same as fundamentalist Christians. And I am a Protestant ecological Christian. I'm an eco Christian, I'm a Christian naturalist. That's how I sell myself. That's on my websites. You've got dozens of sermons on YouTube. I'm consistent everywhere. Okay, I'll accept that that's how you sell yourself. That's how you present yourself to use your words. So the two things that get me about the death cult environmentalist position, my words, not yours, is one, and I hear it from a bunch of different people who kind of get this kind of cultish vibe, is that we are in a special time and God needs our help right now to save Mother Earth or to do whatever. This reasoning, God needs our help, not all the time, but right now, has been, it's at the heart of every war we've ever had. Every genocide that we've ever had, why would we listen to it now? Haven't we learned that if there's any reality to spirituality, to a larger self, to a larger connection, then we're probably not in a special time and God probably doesn't need our help right now. Well, I actually agree with everything you just said. So I don't have any, what you are identifying as the, sounds like Christian, but death cult, what you call, that God needs our help to save her Mother Earth or his mother, whatever. No, I don't even see God as human centered. We're not God's favorite species. We're not reality's favorite species. In fact, we're gonna go extinct on a 100 year timeline. We've got at most another week. That is another 12, I mean, of four million years before a super volcano or an asteroid takes us out and then Earth will continue to spin, the moon will continue to do its thing, the galaxy will continue to do its thing, species will come, species will go, glaciers will come, glaciers will go, long after humans are gone. So we're not God's favorite species. So let's just start there. Well, the other thing that I guess always strikes me, paves me about this certain brand of cultish environmentalism is the kind of play between the acceptance that spirituality is, the acceptance, oneness of all of us being together under one God, which is actually my personal belief. I believe it's the ocean wave drop thing. There's the ocean that we're all just the ocean. And then we have this individualization that arises in our head that we are somehow separate and different. I'm all about that. But what seems to be in conflict with that is this kind of getter done environmentalism. And I know you're backpedaling from that all over the place, but everyone else I've ever talked to that has this environmental vibe, including our buddy, Buddy Rick Archer, it always is accompanied by 10 things that we need to do right now and we need to do the Paris Accords and damn those politicians who won't do it. And if we could only cut down on this and do that. And it's a kind of a getter done attitude that seems to be out of sync a little bit with this deeper spirituality. Now, maybe that's not you. I don't really hear you. You're kind of backing off the getter done saying, hey. Well, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, so backing off would probably be characteristically true because when I awoke to the urgency of climate and the fact, and I started studying the rise and fall of civilizations, when that became my center study spending 20, 30, 40 hours, sometimes 50 hours a week studying that from December of 2012 till now. I did start out being a very serious, I thought it was all about activism, it was all about getting to the streets, it was all about doing everything we can to get political change and body buy. So I would probably have been lumped in the group that you are critiquing there. And then the more I got into it, and then when I started studying the abrupt climate change, it is already in my estimation, and the people who I respect the most, it is already beyond our control. So the time is now not to be urgent, it's not to be panicked, it's too late for that. The time is to notice what's happening and build the strongest sense of relationships of care and commitment and community that you can with your family, your extended family, your neighbors, let's just start there and find good local work that you can be involved in that can be a blessing to your community, your city, your village, your town, whatever. But ultimately to be at peace with your mortality personally, I'm speaking to you from where I went through cancer treatment 10 years ago where we thought I could die in the next eight months. And so I have had that peaceness with my mortality for the last 10 years, thankfully. And but also be at peace with our mortality, species mortality, because whether we go extinct in 10 years or 5 million years, it's probably gonna be in that window. And even if it's 5 million years from now, that's pretty short, that's like a week on the cosmic century timeline. So says Reverend Michael Dowd, and he really isn't interested in debating whether or not anyone holds another position. I think that's what I am most surprised about. Actually, the way you just characterize that is not accurate. One of the things that I see is inevitable when I understand history, is that as things contract, as societies and empires and civilizations contract, and contract is a better word to collapse because sometimes people think off a cliff and it doesn't roll took 320 years to collapse. So as society's contract, there are all kinds of ways of coping and understanding. And denial is one of them, but various kinds of rejuvenation, visions of possibility. And so I respect the diversity, including your diversity because you convincing me or me convincing you is not going to make a difference. So whatever your beliefs are, whatever your access to grind, whatever debates you love having, that is cool. I don't debate people simply because I honor where they're coming from as probably a coping mechanism given what we're actually dealing with. Or because you have a fascination for death cult environmentalism and it feeds your need. I just said that I just said that I... I just said, wait, Alex, Alex. I wish I had that kind of assumption on this show just to shout down everybody who doesn't agree with me on near death experience science or parapsychology or any of the other topics we cover. I wish I just had the balls just to say, you know what, I don't care what you think, I don't care what your position is because I already know the truth. I, first of all, everything you just characterize is not accurate for me. I care what people think. I don't try to convince them of anything. No, but you don't care. I don't, I am not. You threatened to end the conversation if I brought up Judith Curry and her peer reviewed study that is carefully analyzed over years by a very competent climatologist that sea level rise isn't occurring right now. And that's just one, you don't wanna hear it. You shut that down and threaten that you'd end the meeting. Not that I don't care. You can end the meeting at any time. You can edit it right now before you respond. But you understand that your actions don't really back up your words in terms of really wanting to engage with the data. Alex, I made a promise to myself seven years ago that I would not debate anybody. And it's not because I think I'm right that they're screwed up. Let me finish, let me finish, please. This wasn't a debate. But you have a debating style. That's just your nature. That's cool. It's just not what I engage in. And so I warned you several times in the email. You've engaged in it for the last hour, my friend. You've engaged in it for the last hour. That's because it would be rude for me to hang up. And I am interested in having a conversation. And I have no problem with, you know, after this in the forum and stuff, whatever you say about me, you're gonna say about me. But I'm interested in simply sharing to the best that I can what I find inspiring about a post-doom world. Again, postdoom.com, you can, people can learn all about it. And my Profeature Faith course right there, Profeature Faith. That's what I'm into. And I respect the fact that others have a differing opinion and differing interpretation of the science, differing political views, and all that's just totally cool. I don't, that's what happens. I'm focused on what I can focus on and I really love focusing on that because it gives me joy. I live a very joyous life. I'm not a part of the death cult, as you say. I'm at peace with my mortality. And our species mortality, because I think that there's a probably better than 50% chance that we will not last more than 50, 60 years, if that, our species. But I think there's also a 40, 50% chance that some pockets of us will survive for the next two, three, four million years. We'll tell you what that might be a great way to end it. I really do, and I mean this very sincerely, I greatly respect your ability to come in and stick it out for an hour and our mutual willingness to exchange and have a difficult conversation. And I totally respect where you come from. I don't even mind your debate, non-debate kind of stuff. I think we hashed all that out. It's been, I hope, it's been for me a great conversation. I hope people find it interesting, find it engaging. And is there anything else we should mention about your work? We've mentioned the book. Thank God for Evolution. Yeah, well, thank God for Evolution. I no longer, I was still a techno-optimist. I still was a techni-utopian. I believe that Evolution was all about humans and that we were part of a process that was ongoing in complexity. I now no longer think. So the 10% of that book I no longer agree with, I really no longer agree with. So I don't even sell my own book anymore. But the Profiture Faith Course, absolutely 100%, I'm right there. And the post-doom conversations that are all freely available. And my main website is thegreatstory.org, thegreatstory.org. And if you just click on what's new, all of my past sermons and everything else, and you know, I'm all over YouTube. Although there's a Michael Dowd that's the most notorious police officer in New York City history. And so there was a movie done about him a few years ago. So if you Google Michael Dowd, there's a lot of stuff on him and a lot of stuff on me. But yeah, thegreatstory.org and especiallypostdoom.com is where people can find out all kinds of stuff about what I'm up to now in these days. But I really enjoyed, it didn't seem like it, because I got defensive a few times and I apologize for that. But I knew that this was gonna be a mud-wrestling match and I appreciate you having me on and doing what you do and doing it well. So thank you. And I'm sorry I didn't allow you to play the Judith Curry thing. I'm just not interested in debating what one or two or three or four scientists say because I'm listening also to the hundreds or more who are saying things about C-level rise, for example, that are quite convincing to me. Well, Michael, thanks again for being on and enjoyed it. Thanks, Alex. Thanks again to Reverend Michael Dowd for joining me today on Skeptico. I do have a few questions I would tee up from this interview and the first has to do with what I call the junkification of science. You know, there's a lot of debate that is reasonable and important to have about climate but the one thing I think is beyond debate is that we're witnessing an unprecedented level of manipulation of science, junk science and we have to begin to ask ourselves what is really behind that? And the second question, I guess that I tee up and I asked it in the show and it's always interesting to me for people who come at this from a spiritual perspective or people who we would expect to come at this from a spiritual perspective. The question I always throw out is, does God really need our help on this one? Is this like some special case where the all powerful, all mighty, all seeing God has said, gee, guys, you really have to get behind me on this because I can't do it on my own? Does that send off any red flags for you? And I guess my third and final question would be, what's your biggest worry? Global warming or death cult environmentalists? And I think after listening to this interview, you know what I mean. So that'll do it, I guess for this episode. I do look forward to seeing what you have to say. Join me on the Skeptico Forum if you wanna chat and discuss these topics with other folks who listen to the show. Be sure to check out the Skeptico website where you'll find all these shows available for free for download, MP3, no commercials, no firewall, anything like that. And we cover a lot of topics that you might be interested in. This was really kind of an unusual topic to cover, but I guess it did hit a lot of the things that we're interested in as well, as I said in the beginning of the show. So if you like this stuff, come join us. And if you're already a listener and you feel like there's other people who need to hear it, let them know about it. So that's gonna do it for this episode. I have some interesting stuff coming up. Please stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care and bye for now.