What I find refreshing and encouraging in Dowd's message is the willingness to view "divine revelation" as something that is still ongoing, because this entails that "divine truths" that were "revealed" thousands of years ago should really be considered as open to question, critical re-evaluation, reinterpretation and revision. In other words, he seems to be proposing that the faithful should treat (some aspects of) their faith the way scientists treat their hypotheses: subject to change based on new evidence.
Of course, history shows us that this is not really a completely novel idea. People have been reexamining and revising the tenets of their various faiths in almost every generation, and have even tried to introduce new revelations ("updates from God") to supplement or replace existing sacred texts.
But the difficulty throughout history has been that, as people do this, they never seem to achieve a viable basis for establishing consensus, and as a result, each time a group adopts some new variation of religious belief, they do so by splitting away from some other group that chooses to hold to the previously existing belief. And so the number of distinct religious factions -- all similar in many general respects, but ultimately irreconcilable on particular details -- simply and steadily increases over time. (Some factions do ultimately die out for lack of propagating themselves to younger believers, so the increase in sectarian diversity doesn't quite reach geometric proportions.)
Looking briefly at Dowd's web site, I noticed that there were a number of replies from readers who were strongly opposed to his ideas -- in their view, Dowd simply is not the kind of Christian he should be (i.e. whatever kind of Christian they happened to be). These people demonstrate the impossibility of establishing any sort of objective basis for consensus when it comes to modifying or updating religious beliefs.
And this is what I find disappointing and unfortunate about Dowd's "mission": he wants to convince people that it's possible to examine physical reality with scientific detachment and empirical rigor, while still believing in an all-powerful deity who takes a personal interest in each individual's well-being by watching over us and responding to our prayers (after having taken the trouble to create the universe and life as we know it, with all the threats to human survival to be found therein).
Alas, the Rev. Dowd cannot have it both ways. His acceptance of scientific research must lead at least to a kind of theism that acknowledges a non-interventionist creator (we are all on our own now), if not to full-scale atheism (we represent a particular state of development in an unguided process where life is working things out for itself as it goes along).
Whether he proceeds along either of those paths, or simply continues trying to juggle the contradictions in his current ideas, he will be leaving behind a number of hard-core "true believers" who will not accept any questioning or critical thinking applied to their unwavering dogma, no matter how stridently their beliefs conflict with observable reality. Unless/until he becomes an atheist, Dowd is just another sectarian branch falling away into a field already littered with countless other branches.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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