Holy Cosmic Stardust!:
Celebrating the Marriage of Science and Religion

Jun 6-8, 2008

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Everything we know and love is recycled stardust. Our bodies were forged inside the fiery bellies of ancestral stars that lived and died before our Sun was born. Gazing up at the night sky, we are stardust contemplating the stars.

Program elements will include music, playful drama, visuals, and more:

• The River of Life – Take an epic pilgrimage back to the origin of life on earth, where we greet the other life forms that have traveled the same 4 billion year journey.
• The Great Story – Hear the 14 billion year sacred story of cosmic genesis.
• The Meanings of Life – Explore how to heal the rift between science and religion, creating a fresh and exciting synthesis in which it is possible to honor traditional stories while celebrating our science-based understanding of our world. Science seeks to understand and explain the material world. Whenever a scientific discovery is made, the creation story changes, but human beings are meaning-makers; our interpretations draw from all previous conceptions of the universe.
• The Gifts of Death – Make sense of the beauty and tragedy of existence in an Evolving Cosmos. We can grow in trust and gratitude by understanding the creative role death plays in making possible everything we value.
• Our Brain’s Creation Story: Ancestors Within – Hear about exciting new discoveries in evolutionary psychology and brain science that offer ways to clarify and help us significantly improve our lives, including our most intimate and challenging relationships.
• Thank God for Evolution! – Explore the main ideas in Michael’s book of the same title, which has been endorsed by five Nobel laureates and other luminaries.

This program is highly illustrated and playful, weaving music and drama together with stunning visuals. Learn, reflect on, play, and celebrate the 14-billion-year journey of cosmos, the 4-billion-year journey of life on earth, and the more recent journey of human cultures. This is the history of everyone and everything.

Michael Dowd was a UCC pastoral minister before evolving to where his great joy is sharing the 14-billion-year history of the universe in ways that evoke awe, gratitude, and trust and inspire faith and action on behalf of life.. His latest book Thank God for Evolution! How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, is one of the most widely endorsed books of our time.

Connie Barlow is the developer of the astounding website TheGreatStory.org, which generates more than 250,000 hits per month. She wrote four science books: The Ghosts of Evolution; Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science; Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life; and From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences.

Since 2002, Michael and Connie have lived entirely on the road, teaching and preaching a sacred understanding of evolution and the marriage of science and religion. “America’s evolutionary evangelists” are igniting a new and exciting synthesis of science and faith. We are honored to welcome them on their first visit to Rowe.