This sermon is all about Darwin, the second one that we've had this church year. However, mine comes without a slideshow. Sorry.
There is one issue that we need to deal with right away, as I am sure that you are all on the edge of your seats wondering, "Was Darwin a Unitarian?" (It is preposterous to imagine that he was a Universalist.)
The answer is, as it is with most folk, "No."
"But," you're thinking, "surely, he would have been Unitarian had he only known enough about us." Alas, Darwin knew plenty about Unitarianism. He married one Emma Wedgewood, a staunch Unitarian, and Christian, from a family of staunch Unitarians. (And, yes, these Wedgewoods are the very same Wedgewoods that make fine china. Think about that the next time you're in the market for a saucer.) Darwin once studied for the Anglican ministry, but his musings about nature whilst sailing about on the Beagle made him somewhat dissatisfied with the Anglican view of things. So, around the time of his marriage, he flirted with Unitarianism and decided (we suppose) that it was not respectful enough of the truth for him. That, by the way, is what this sermon is all about, respect for the truth.
Well, if we can't claim that Darwin was a Unitarian, then, at least, we can claim that we Unitarians are Darwinian, right? Who among us would not stand up against the Christian right when they demand that creationism be given the same status as evolution in the classroom? Who among us does not believe that the theory of evolution is the story of life here on Earth? Well, perhaps some of us. But, if you're one of them, I'm not talking to you this morning. You can go get a cup of coffee, survey the hymns in the hymnal, or otherwise occupy yourself.
Now, for the rest of you, those who do pledge allegiance to the theory of evolution, I intend to do two things. (That's probably one too many.) First, I want to separate the sheep from the goats, those who claim to be Darwinian from those who really are. Second, I have a few words for those among us who are truly Darwinian. Those among us who hew to evolutionary fundamentalism with all the vigor that Rev. Hagee's followers cling to Christian fundamentalism and the late but not lamented Taliban clung to Islamic fundamentalism.
So, let's begin. You might be Darwinian if ....
There are two aspects of the theory of evolution. The first is the story of life on Earth. How microscopic strings of complex chemicals sprung from the primordial ooze and gave rise to all the various forms of life that we see today (and which we appear to be stomping out at an alarming rate, I might add). What a compelling account! How could the Christian fundamentalists down the street not be persuaded that this story is true? When we think of evolution, this is what we think of this story. When we imagine that Christian fundamentalists don't believe in Evolution, it is this story that we think they don't believe in. They don't think that the earth is any older than 4,000 years or so, and they don't think that they are descended from a monkey. We Unitarians have no problem with these propositions, and we're rather proud that we can recognize the truth when we see it.
But, there is another part of Darwin's theory, one that we don't like to think about because we're just as uncomfortable with it as the Christian fundamentalists down the street. And, this aspect has to do not with what the story of life is but how that story unfolded, with the mechanism behind evolution.
Deep, deep in the human psyche is the notion that we're somehow special. Way back when, we thought that we were at the center of a rather small universe whose every working was meticulously tended to by a warm-hearted old fellow named God who looked a bit like Santa Claus. Well, sigh, as it turns out, we're not at the center of a small universe. We're not even at the center of a solar system, and the universe is unimaginably large and has no center whatsoever. What's more, the way things work in this universe are determined in a mechanical way by certain fundamental laws of physics.
And, if that weren't enough, along comes Darwin, and shows that we're nothing more than the descendants of complicated molecules that rose out of the primordial ooze. But, hey, isn't there some comfort here? I mean, here we are, the product of millions of years of evolution, a fine work of art, the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, and perhaps evolving into something ever finer. We may be descendants of the primordial ooze, but we are better, more advanced; we have "intelligence."
But wait. How does evolution really work? Individuals make copies of themselves. And these copies have random (and I emphasize "random") variations as the result of a purely mechanical (and I emphasize "mechanical") process that is grounded those laws of physics and chemistry that govern everything else in this universe. We are the products of a "blind watchmaker," to use Richard Dawkin's terms, who simply tries everything and keeps what works.
No, wait. It's worse than that. A watchmaker is trying to make a watch. In evolution, there is no watchmaker, only the inexorable workings of the physical world. We aren't the pinnacle of evolution because there is no pinnacle, just the workings of this mechanism grinding out variant after variant. There is no particular direction to evolution and no way to say that we're more advanced than some other creature. Intelligence, eight-foot necks-they're all the same to evolution.
And what does this imply about your specialness. Well, maybe "special" isn't the right way to put it. We look to nature for signs of our significance. We look out there for something that tells us what we are about. After all, how else would we know?
So, what does evolution say you're about. You happen to be one of the myriad assemblages of organic matter on this earth that, in this particular geological era, is stable enough that most of these assemblages stick around long enough to give rise to rough copies of themselves. This will not last, according to evolutionary theory. Our species will either die a slow death as it is supplanted by other species, that probably won't have any intelligence whatsoever. Or, humanity will disappear in one of the occasional mass extinctions brought on by a change in the environment, perhaps even a change initiated by ourselves. In either case, you can bet your booties that life will not end with the extinction of our species and that those species that survive and prosper will probably be so bizarre and/or primitive that we, were we still around, would be reluctant to even call them living.
Not much in that account of evolution to tell you what you're about, is there? Is there any way that we can rescue our own significance?
One approach, popular among U-Us and non U-Us, is what I call the monolith approach, after the movie 2001. You'll recall that in that movie, at some point at the dawn of humanity, a monolith (from Jupiter?) magically appeared to a troop of proto-humans and invested them with whatever is that makes us human. Now, you don't have to believe in the monolith bit (although I'm sure that a few over-zealous sci-fi fans actually do). To be a monolithian, you only have to believe in some supernatural intervention that establishes the sanctity or significance of human life. You might think that God, for example, just sat around waiting for humans to evolve and, when they did, he or she plonked a soul into them. You might believe in reincarnation, that, contrary to all mathematical logic, someone else's long dead spirit entered your body at or before birth. You might believe that you have a spirit that is intrinsically immaterial and exempt from physical laws. You might even believe in the biblical stories of creation and redemption.
I don't want to make the monolithians among you too uncomfortable, so I'll just mention that whatever support the monolith approach might have had, say, a thousand years ago, has all but disappeared, leaving its supporters grasping at straws and believing things that even a politician or used-car salesman wouldn't ask you to buy. The main point about you monolithians is that you aren't Darwinian, no matter how much you like Darwin's story of life and scoff at the biblical alternative. At the heart of monolithianism is the need to add a little something extra to Darwin's theory, and that little something extra must be supernatural because if it were natural, we would (sigh) be back to evolution and lose the very significance that the great monolith conferred upon us.
So, if you can't see any sensible way to believe in the supernatural, if you believe that there is absolutely nothing in nature that establishes the worth and dignity of any human life, then, you might be an evolutionary fundamentalist. The rest of you, monolithians, can now go get a cup of coffee and spend the next few minutes perusing the vacuous readings in the back of the hymnal. Where are we left, then, we Darwinian fundamentalists, those of us who believe that we really arose from nature and are part of nature, and that nature definitely isn't here for our sake. We are on the road that evolution happened to take in its random walk through geological time. Many of us stop right there, thinking that knowing the facts of life settles all matters about its meaning. If you think this way, you really are an evolutionary fundamentalist; "Darwin said it. I believe it. That settles it." You may disagree with Christian fundamentalists may differ in their view of the facts, but you share with them the notion that the facts are what matter.
I'm not so sure. What the facts tell me is that they don't matter. If they don't, what does matter? If we can't look to nature for signs of our own significance, where do we look? A wonderful children's book called "The Wheel on the School" by Meindert De Jong has some interesting advice for searchers. "When you're looking for something, look where must be and look where it can't possibly be." This advice applies as much to the meaning of life as it does to earrings and wallets. If I've looked at nature, where the meaning of life ought to be found, and if I've found nothing there, maybe I should look at all that stuff I threw out along the way. Maybe it's time for me to reread scripture with another eye and listen to fundamentalists of other stripes with another ear, asking not whether their beliefs are right or wrong or whether they are open- or closed-minded, but what brings them to the place they're at. It's not logic surely, and, if it's not logic what is it, something that supercedes or rises above rationality?
Have you ever noticed that what we read about Christian fundamentalists in the news often doesn't jibe with what they seem to be in person? In the news, they appear to be hateful and uncompromising crusaders, for school prayer, for creationism, against secular humanism. In person, they are a happy lot, filled with the joy of Christ and striving, in all good will, to make sure that everyone else is filled with the joy of Christ. I wonder if Islamic fundamentalists or Hindu fundamentalists are pretty much the same in person. I wonder if there isn't some way for we evolutionary fundamentalists to find such joy.
"Joy in Darwin" just doesn't seem to work, but the places where joy resides are the same for all of us. There is some joy in beauty whether in Darwin's writing or the bible.
There is much joy in hope. The hope for us evolutionary fundamentalists is that we each us fill our own lives from birth to death and more importantly, that life in the large sense is indestructible. Even if we manage to kill ourselves off (which I hope we don't do), it's hard to imagine a scenario (short of the planet being engulfed by the sun) in which no life forms would survive on the planet. And even if they did, there are countless other planets upon which life thrives, and these planets, as they are engulfed by their suns, will be replaced by other planets. Life is a very big proposition.
Finally, there is love. What Christ, at the heart of matters, offers is love, the kind of love that stays with you when no other kind of love will. Where Christian fundamentalists go wrong, even to the point of betraying their saviour, is in failing to extend that same kind of love to all people. We evolutionary fundamentalists need not make the same mistake.