Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
September 18, 2005
First Reading:
from Proverbs 3 of the Hebrew Scriptures
Happy is the one who finds wisdom,
and the one who gets understanding,
"for the gain from wisdom is better than gain from silver
and its profit better than gold.
She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called happy.
Second Reading:
from The Descent of Man
by Charles Darwin
The
belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most
complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is,
however, impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or
instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual
agencies seems to be universal; and apparently follows from a considerable
advance in the reasoning powers of man, and from a still greater advance in his
faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder.
Third Reading:
Judith Walker-Riggs, as quoted by Forrest Church in A Chosen Faith
Long, long ago, it seemed so
simple. The universe was a three-storied apartment house, with heaven on the top
floor, full of gods and stars; earth in the middle, full of people and animals
and plants; and hell in the basement, full of terrible and scary things. God had
nothing else to do but sit up there watching us. We were the center of
attention. We were his people.
Then came Copernicus. He said that the sun did not move
around the earth at all, but was a fixed star. He said it was the earth and us
on it that did the moving, and, worse, that the earth was just one of the
planets that so moved, one among many, and not at the center of anything at
all.…
In the last few decades we have been entering a new vision
of the universe as radical and revolutionary as the Copernican changeover, and
we still have not worked out what it all means, either in theology or in our
view of what humanity is and what we ought to do with our lives.
Sermon:
Eighty years ago, in 1925, John Scopes, a
biology teacher, was taken to court for teaching evolution in the classroom. The
state of Tennessee had recently passed a law forbidding evolution education, and
a group of Dayton progressives wanted some publicity for their town. They got
it. Journalists swarmed to the trial. For years tension had mounted between
traditionalists and modernists, and now a showdown erupted. The great Unitarian
lawyer, Clarence Darrow, provided the defense, proclaiming, “Scopes isn’t on
trial. Civilization is on trial.” William Jennings Bryan, the three-time
Democratic presidential candidate, served as prosecutor, declaring, “If
evolution wins, Christianity goes.” Jennings was a populist who led a
fundamentalist assault to banish Darwin’s theory of evolution from the
classroom. The beloved prosecutor used a fascinating line of inquiry that
basically went: “These are simple people. They work hard. They want to believe
something beautiful in life. Why do you want to take that away from them?” What
became known as the famous monkey trial did, only after appeal, succeed in
throwing out the Tennessee law banning evolution, but it persuaded textbook
publishers and state boards of education to stop teaching evolution altogether.
Not until the 1960s would evolution become standard curriculum. It took the
Russian-launched Sputnik to scare Americans into beefing up science education.
Interestingly, that era had their own “equal-time” laws which required the
genesis narrative to be taught alongside evolution, but they were struck down by
the courts in 1968 for violating the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment.
Here in the 21st century, along with many other
educated folks, I assumed that Darwin’s theory of evolution was a battle won
decades ago by science and the enlightenment mindset of western civilization. I
thought controversies over evolution theory were passé and only the focus of
religious zealots. But a recent pew forum poll found that 42 percent agreed that
“living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.”
Nearly two-thirds of Americans currently believe “intelligent design” ought to
be taught alongside evolution in public schools in science classes.
The way some people talk about Charles Darwin, you’d think
he must have been a monster. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, the most powerful
lawmaker in the land, said awhile back that the Columbine High School shootings
happened “because our school systems teach our people that they are nothing but
glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial mud. Guns don’t
kill people,” he argued, and I quote, “Charles Darwin kills people.”
Charles Darwin happens to be one of my favorite historical
figures, and I am compelled to address the truth about Darwin the man, his
famous theory, and the implications it has on authentic religious faith. Charles
Darwin, in his day, was known to be one of the most respectful, sensitive men in
his society. A number of people claimed he was overly sensitive, always
refraining from offending anyone, and often anguished about the suffering of
others, even when he didn’t know them. He grew up in a Unitarian home and was
encouraged to study with an open mind. Yes, Charles Darwin was raised a
Unitarian, until his mother died and he was put in an Anglican boarding school.
He pursued studies to be an Episcopal priest, not so he could be a clergyman,
but so that he could study nature, for some priests back then dedicated
themselves to natural theology. Darwin never donned the cloth, for he got a
remarkable opportunity—to be the naturalist aboard a ship that would take a
five-year voyage. By the end of the second of those five years, Darwin saw how
evolution works. It was very simple, the theory of natural selection. When
organisms reproduce, they never reproduce exact replicas of themselves, instead
there are always variations in hereditary characteristics. Those organisms that
have characteristics most suitable to survival and reproduction live and their
characteristics become more widespread in a population while the others fade
out. That’s it. Darwin summed up this most influential idea in western thought
in ten words: “[M]ultiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.” He
knew that ‘strongest’ didn’t mean ‘brawniest.’ but rather an organism’s ability
to have offspring that could survive, whether that meant having stripes, or an
elongated neck, a bigger brain, more perceptive ears, a heartier digestive
system.
A classic example of evolution in action occurred in an
England forest among butterflies. The population of pale white butterflies
increased because, sitting on pale tree branches, birds could not spot them
easily. When a factory was built nearby and the smoke pollution darkened the
tree branches, the near white butterflies stood out against the branches and
were easy targets by the birds. But mutations occurred among the population, as
Darwin’s theory hypothesizes, and as those light colored butterflies reproduced,
most of them were born the same color, while a few, by chance, were even
whiter—easy food. Other butterflies, also by chance, were born greyer than their
parents, and these young butterflies blended into the polluted tree branches and
lived long enough to have plenty of offspring. Within a few years, almost every
butterfly in that forest was grey.
Darwin’s simple theory reverberated through western
society, calling upon people to re-assess their religion and morality. The
implications of his theory were devastating for traditional religious belief.
And because of this need for reassessment, evolutionary theory threatens a lot
of people who see themselves as the center of the universe and insist on
affirming fallacies that science demonstrates as implausible as the sun
revolving around the earth.
There’s no way getting around it, Darwin’s idea undermines
traditional notions of God. The best argument of his time for the existence of
God suddenly was called into question. It is called Paley’s argument. If you
come across a stone, you need think nothing of it. If you come across a finely
crafted watch with all of its intricacies, you know it must have had a creator.
It just didn’t materialize out of nothing, but it took time and attention to put
it together. Similarly with plants, animals, and humans. All of these are so
well put together with an amazing amount of diversity, that clearly there must
be a creator, and so God must exist. Darwin’s theory of natural selection, later
supported by the discovery and research of genes and DNA replication, offers a
far less mysterious explanation for the development of life than biblical
stories.
For our faith tradition, critical inquiry is a core
religious value. Science makes use of critical inquiry as a lens to better
understand our world through testing hypotheses. Good theories are simply
stories, stories that work. As our understanding about the world deepens with
scientific discovery, the story sometimes changes and sometimes gets longer. But
it will never reach finality, just as faith cannot reach finality.
You may say “what about the story of intelligent
design—isn’t that a story that works?” Actually, no, it’s a nice idea, but it is
not a scientific theory. It’s a faith stance. Intelligent design theory isn’t
really a theory at all because it can’t be tested. There’s nothing to show that
it works. Instead intelligent design theory is speculation, not science. Anybody
who says so fails to understand the basic fundamentals of science. Faith stances
won’t ever be science and should never be a part of science classes. Blurring
faith and science leads to poor science, which then ultimately weakens authentic
faith. I don’t understand why many Americans have difficulty with this. One way
or another, most Christian denominations throughout the world have managed to
reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection.
Stephen Jay Gould notes that if a French, German or Scandinavian politician who
called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing
evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old, the politician
would be bundled off to a mental hospital. As he says, “No one looking at the
physical record would determine that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, that
fossils represent the creatures drowned in Noah's flood and so on. The only way
those notions would even occur to you is if you considered the Bible an unerring
historical document.” There’s the problem.
Some people claim that the theory of evolution negates
religion. Actually, for religious liberals it clarifies -- and makes urgent -- a
liberal religious perspective. Gould puts it beautifully in A Glorious Accident:
“Through no fault of our own, and by dint of no cosmic plan or conscious
purpose, we have become, by the grace of a glorious evolutionary accident called
intelligence, the stewards of life’s continuity on earth. We have not asked for
that role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we
are.” We need not only science but also a faith informed by our faculties of
imagination, curiosity, and wonder.
Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Science can
be used to complement and hone faith rather than contradict it. Biology
professor, Kenneth Miller of Brown defends his own faith in God. When students
ask what kind of God, he struggled answering until he responded with what has
become the name of his book, Darwin’s God.
So let’s reflect some on what evolutionary theory teaches
about faith, the faith of a Darwinist. As for the morality or values exemplified
by nature, the process of natural selection is ruthless. Evolution occurs with
the extinction of creatures with less adaptive traits. Darwin, himself, suffered
interminably with the implications of his theory. Life is harsh.
Some people claim that Darwin’s theory abolishes the
meaning of life. Actually, Darwin’s theory puts an extraordinary amount of
meaning into life. For it saddles human beings with the responsibility of what
we do or do not do with this life. My colleague Mark Belletini puts it
poetically: “Gingko trees don’t express a sense of fairness. Human beings do.
Perch do not write love sonnets, storks do not express compassion, eels do not
wriggle in tenderness when their children laugh. The natural world outside
humankind has instinct, and the higher mammals even express elementary forms of
love, but the grand ideas of justice and compassion evolved for the first time
with clarity within the human heart.” In other words, humanity has
developed a moral compass and honed that compass over millennia, even if it
isn’t consistently followed, it is there.
Darwin’s theory illuminates the truth that everything alive
is changing. Everything is evolving. With Darwin, we cannot live under the
illusion that there is anything living that is unchanging. The same goes for
knowledge and understanding, including religious knowledge and understanding. In
science, ever new insights emerge. And in religion, revelation is never sealed,
ever new insights emerge. More than that, we can’t know in what way things are
changing or exactly where we are going. Some religious worldviews believe that
something specific will happen in the end times, but Darwinian theory calls upon
a faith that discounts any claim of finality.
Evolutionary theory even posits something like
original sin. Each and everyone of us has the propensity for greed, lust, envy,
hatred, jealousy, and prejudice. According to evolutionary theory, these selfish
proclivities run deep in us, so deep that we often are aware neither of how
self-serving our behaviors are, nor how useless or destructive they are. We are
designed to think that we are the most special person in the world. To come to
believe that you are not the center of the universe takes some maturity. To
behave as if you are not the most special person in the universe, takes a great
deal more maturity.
Charles Darwin believed that life evolved for the greater
good—the “good of the group” and that also goes for human beings, that human
morality has evolved. In 1882, he said, “As man advances in civilization, and
small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell
each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to
all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point
being once reached there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies
extending to the men of all nations and races.”
I want to believe with Darwin that it takes mere reason to
be good and that there is only an artificial barrier that prevents us from being
compassionate towards all people the world over, but research done in the field
of evolutionary psychology strongly suggests this barrier is far from
artificial. (Not to mention how many peoples of the world treat other peoples).
Instead this barrier is very real, caused, according to evolutionary psychology,
by our instinctual desire to pass on our genes. We are hardwired to be selfish,
self-serving, and self-absorbed. But this stamp from nature isn’t the end of the
story. The genetic mandate, that inner macho bugle call to move in the interest
of the survival of the fittest into war and brutality gets challenged time and
again by the prophetic call of peacemakers who serve the larger interest of the
common good. To transcend the effects of the selfish gene, we have an inner call
and capacity to develop and adhere to a moral code, to have it awakened, even
fully operational. This takes self-examination, personal scrutiny, and
self-honesty. It is our basic, or should I say base, human nature that prevents
us from being sympathetic to people who are different, and it is a part of our
human nature that we have the capacity to transcend our self-centeredness.
In this time of providing relief to those
displaced by Hurricane Katrina, we are witnessing a cultural battle between
those who believe in responding to the call to love and those who believe the
public should not be expected to sacrifice for others.
Another way liberal religion has been shaped and
transformed by Darwin and his theory of evolution is by affirming the priority
of justice over doctrine. As moral animals, doing what is right is more
important than thinking what is right. In theological language, orthopraxy,
ethical action, is far more vital than orthodoxy, having the right beliefs. Love
trumps opinions for Darwinians. As hurricane survivors fan out across the
country, and as people’s lives have been destroyed by this catastrophe, what
matters so much more than what you think about it is what you will do about it.
And that goes for us as a congregation. What shall we do? We’ve already
collected over $8300. A few of you have expressed a desire for our congregation
to do more. Do we want to do more? It’s our call. Let me or a board member know.
We’re meeting tonight, so its good timing.
As we become aware that happiness does not come from
constant striving for pleasure, constant striving for wealth, or constant
striving for status, we can forge our own moral knowing—and that knowing comes
from the peace that comes with taking steps to right livelihood. Those steps are
best taken in the company of others who share the same dedication to free
ourselves for the sake of love.
Here at Unity Temple, we are gathered as children of the
Enlightenment, as inheritors of Darwin’s faith; while we recognize that we are
hardwired for selfishness, we come together to nourish those values that make us
uniquely moral animals who can transcend our baser desires.
May our religion be to walk through the door of profound
love, so as to live according to the best of our human nature. To answer William
Jennings Bryan’s plea to John Scopes, “why do you want to take something
beautiful away from those who believe in a literal reading of the biblical
account?” I respond, as human beings we are called to a profound love, we are
called to our nobility as a truly moral animal, there is great beauty and joy
that comes with transcending our animal nature, and doing so opens up a door to
the brilliant possibilities we have as human beings. Why would anyone want to
take away or dilute the gems of authentic faith, a faith worthy of Darwin’s
intellect and love of people?
Blessed be. Amen
© Copyright 2005 Rev.
Alan Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
