Dancing with the Sacred: Evolution, Ecology and God

Karl Peters has created an astonishing new dialogue between science and religion. Using insights from evolutionary biology, process theology and the range of world religions, he proposes that evolution can provide a key to becoming religious. Dancing with the Sacred weaves together three themes: how the sacred can be understood as the creative activity of nature, human history and individual life; how human beings might understand themselves in ways that motivate them to live more in harmony with the rest of life on planet Earth; and how people might live meaningfully in a world in which suffering and death are creatively intertwined with life. Peters fashions new insights into morality, ecology and religion. He describes a model of God based on the Darwinian ides of random variation and natural selection. He suggests that God is a process that includes the emergence of new possibilities in nature, human history and personal living. God is like a dance, he says, and by participating in this creative process we are dancing with the Sacred.