In time, atheists may come to look like prophets

Much has been written about the decline of religion and rise of secularism in America and the rest of the developed world. Prospects for a turnaround reside, paradoxically, with those I call the New Atheists.

Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and colleagues ridicule scriptural passages that depict a vengeful, terrorist God and that sanction misogyny, homophobia and child abuse. In so doing, they goad religious people and institutions to update our maps of reality.

The New Atheists may not be reaching the literalists. Moderates and liberals, however, and those who identify as "spiritual but not religious," cannot so easily ignore their critiques. I certainly couldn't.

"The End of Faith" by Sam Harris and "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins made me squirm. I am, after all, a preacher. I initially steered clear of questioning the widespread practice of seeking guidance and inspiration in ancient texts. Now, however, I do question a reverence for unchanging holy books while modern discoveries take a backseat or have no seat at all.

And so my sermons now begin, "Today's scripture reading is from cosmologist Carl Sagan." (Pause for laughter.) "Science is, at least in part, informed worship."

Lately, I've been going further. "The New Atheists are God's prophets," I proclaim in pulpits, podcasts, and blog posts.

The New Atheists, I suggest, are not enemies of religion; they are modern-day prophets. Prophets traditionally were those who chastised their people for having fallen out of sync with their time, with "God's ways." "Come into right relationship with reality," they warned, "or perish!"

Today's science-oriented atheists call us into right relationship with our time, and that means using all of our best information and cross-cultural experience.

Ours is a time of space telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers and the worldwide web. It is also a time of smart bombs, collapsing economies and exploding oil platforms. This is not a time for parsing the lessons given to a few goatherds, tentmakers and camel drivers.

We should let today's collective intelligence revitalize our faith traditions. We should rejoice in the discovery that the atoms of our bodies were forged inside supernovas, and celebrate this natural process as divine.

The story of evolution can be told in ways that help us be grateful that we are related to everything -- not just monkeys, but jellyfish and zucchini too. We can marvel at how rapidly our species has learned to care and cooperate in ever-widening circles: from family groups and tribes all the way to nation-states, and now globally. An evolutionary God can be as vast, as real and as all-embracing as our creative cosmos, and no more inclined than the universe to take sides in matters of war, weather or geological upheaval.

There will come a time when religious leaders derive guidance and inspiration from our common creation story and teach and preach the discoveries of science as God's word. When that day arrives, our faith traditions will thrive -- and perhaps a few of us will look back and thank God for the prophets who appeared as atheists.

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Michael Dowd, an ordained minister who describes himself as an "evolutionary evangelist," is author of "Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World."

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