Michael Dowd Quotes

Homo colossus is Willam Catton's term for "industrial" humanity. That's where each of us uses 20-50 times the resources, and exudes 20-50 times the waste as Homo sapiens.

I dedicate this book to the glory of God.

[F]or... over 99 percent of human history—there is little evidence that any culture understood developmental time and space... remotely similar to... today. Nevertheless, the big cosmological questions demanded answers, and so the answers came. ...Orally transmitted stories would evolve—until (and if!) they were written down and declared to be the unchanging revelation of God. When a story becomes scripture, it ceases to evolve.

The history of more than 80 previous boom and bust societies... reveals how and why Homo colossus is destined for near-term extinction.

[S]ocioeconomic trends: population, motor vehicles, fertilizer constumption, tourism, river dams, etc., ...are the drivers of biosphere collapse. ...These are ecodidal trends and... earth system collapse trends.

Evidence is also compelling that the vast majority... will deny this, especially those benefiting from the existing order, those legitimately concerned about the consequences of collapse, and those who fear that accepting reality means "giving up." ...Virtually all of us fit that paragraph ...

Scientists... are moving away from a mechanistic... way of thinking and into an emergent, developmental worldview. Evolution... can be embraced as God glorifying and Christ edifying.

[H]opium is a comforting vision of the future that requires breaking the laws of physics, biology or ecology, such as thinking that we can slow, stop or reverse The Great Acceleration of Gaian Collapse.

Collapse is when a gradual downward trend in biophysical health and wellbeing goes into unstoppable decline; runaway, out of control; etc., it's... abrupt climate change... like 10,000 years of climate change in half a human lifetime. ...This is known as "The Great Acceleration" of Biospheric Collapse.

, , and... abrupt non-linear ... ... verified that even if every human being went extinct tonight, stopping emissions immediately, we'd still see 25 to 40 ft of sea level rise in the next two centuries.

You will... find here effective ways to talk about evolution to any friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors who are biblical literalists or young earth creationists.

At any measuere, absolutely everything that humans rely on... is now in precipitous free fall, unstoppable.

[T]he fact that our Universe has been transforming along a discernible path for billions of years—the fact that creation was not a one-time event—is of little or no dispute. ...[T]his undeniable fact ...makes me want to shout from the mountaintops: "...The war is over!"

Each and every human being who has ever brought anything of beauty, value, or importance into the world has done so only because... impregnated or in-spirited by some aspect of Beauty, Truth, Love, or other attributes of God. This... is beyond comprehension, beyond... force or free will. ...as if some power greater than ourselves is at work. ...There is a sense of having served, like Mary, as a vessel for something ...greater than our own capacities. ...<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[w:Peak experience|P]eak experience]]s are religious moments ...The story of Jesus's conception can remind us of such miracles in our ...lives.

Denial is also the instinctual impulse to reject or discount information that calls into question our hopes, assumptions, or expectations about the future.