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THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
By David Herndon
January 30, 2005
First Unitarian Church
Pittsburgh, PA
When I was in first grade, my parents and I lived in Grand
Forks, North Dakota, and my school was Lake Agassiz Elementary School.
My school was named after Lake Agassiz, a large lake that existed more
than ten thousand years ago toward the end of the glacial period. It covered
an area about 750 miles long and about 250 miles wide, including parts
of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Manitoba. Lake Agassiz was named after
Louis Agassiz, a widely respected scientist who lived from 1807 to 1873.
Born in Switzerland, Agassiz became a professor at Harvard College in
1848.
Here are two interesting things to consider: First, Agassiz was deeply
opposed to the theory of evolution that had been set forth by Charles
Darwin in 1859. Indeed, in his Essay on Classification, Agassiz wrote:
"The combination in time and space of all these [species] exhibits
not only thought, it shows also premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness,
prescience, omniscience, providence. In one word, all these facts in their
natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore,
and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of
the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe." The second interesting
thing to consider is that Agassiz was by religion a Unitarian.
In our own time-one hundred and thirty-two years after the death of Louis
Agassiz, one hundred forty-six years after Darwin published The Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection-the vast majority of Unitarian
Universalists would differ with Agassiz, regarding Darwin's theory of
evolution as well-established scientific doctrine. Evolution is so well-established
that Ernst Mayr of Harvard University has written: "The theory of
evolution is quite rightly called the greatest unifying theory in biology.
The diversity of organisms, similarities and differences between kinds
of organisms, patterns of distribution and behavior, adaptation and interaction,
all this was merely a bewildering chaos of facts until given meaning by
the evolutionary theory. There is no area of biology in which that theory
has not served as an ordering principle." Accordingly, the vast majority
of present-day Unitarian Universalists would consider the Biblical account
of the creation of plants and animals to be wonderful poetry but bad science,
and would object to the view that the Biblical account of the creation
of plants and animals should be taught in schools as legitimate science.
A moment ago, I shared with you two interesting things to consider about
Louis Agassiz. Now here are two interesting things to consider about Charles
Darwin: First, he had strong ties to Unitarianism as a child and resisted
religious orthodoxy throughout his adult life. Darwin's mother was Susannah
Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, who founded the well-known china
manufacturing firm and who was a devoted admirer of the Unitarian minister
and scientist Joseph Priestley. Darwin's mother died when he was eight
years old, but when he was a young boy his mother made sure that he attended
the Unitarian church in Shrewsbury as well as the day school operated
by the local Unitarian minister. The second interesting thing to consider
about Darwin is that after he wrote the manuscript for The Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection, he locked it away for nearly twenty years
without publishing it.
Why would one resist Darwin's theory of evolution? After all, it sounds
simple and reasonable. According to Darwin, random genetic variations
become more widely distributed in a population as a result of natural
selection, a process in which those individuals whose genetic characteristics
offer the most advantageous prospects for survival in a given environment
are most likely to survive and pass on their genetic characteristics to
their offspring. Over time, the result may be a new species. What's the
problem with that?
Several centuries earlier, the astronomer Copernicus created a similar
problem when he proposed a model of the solar system with the sun in the
center and the planets in orbits around the sun. Until then, most people
figured that the earth was in the central position. The earth was somehow
diminished in significance when it was no longer central, and most people
found this difficult to accept.
Darwin proposed a model of life which said that all species, including
human beings, came into being as a result of self-organizing natural processes
with no pre-ordained destiny. Until then, most people in Western civilization
figured that the purpose of life was to be found in the old story of salvation
that began with the Book of Genesis and ended with the Book of Revelations.
Human beings were central in this story. Darwin's theory not only took
away this central role, but left one wondering what might then be the
overall purpose of life.
My eighth grade history teacher had a wonderful exercise in which his
students distinguished between Fact and Opinion. He would present us with
a series of twenty or thirty sentences. We had to state whether these
were assertions of fact or assertions of opinion. Perhaps you had something
similar in your education. Consider this assertion: The first slaves came
to what is now the United States in 1619. Fact or Opinion? This is a fact.
Now consider this assertion: Slavery is wrong. Fact or opinion? This is
an opinion.
I encountered this distinction again in theological school, but with a
twist. Here is the question: Can you derive morals, values, purposes,
and ethical standards by consulting the universe? In other words, are
morals, values, purposes, and ethical standards somehow ingrained in the
universe, somehow given by the universe, somehow existing independently
of what human beings think, as the truths of mathematics exist independently
of what human beings think? In other words yet again, are morals, values,
purposes, and ethical standards Facts or Opinions?
Immanuel Kant believed that morals, values, purposes, and ethical standards
are Facts. Kant believed that the structure of reasoning itself provided
incontrovertible standards for ethical behavior. Kant was one of the most
brilliant exponents of a tradition of thought, certainly including most
religious thought, which has looked for objective statements about what
is good and right.
Another school of thought would say that Kant and many others are committing
the so-called Naturalistic Fallacy [1] -that is, they are trying to derive
Opinions from Facts. Adherents of this school of thought say, however,
that it is impossible to derive Opinions from Facts. One cannot look at
what is and then, on that basis alone, draw conclusions about what ought
to be. According to this view, the natural world around us contains no
morals, values, purposes, or ethical standards, and we search the natural
world in vain for objective instruction about what is good and right.
Darwin's theory of evolution accounts for life using only Facts, not Opinions.
Darwin's theory of evolution suggests that life, in all of its marvelous
and dizzying complexity, with all of its urgency and drive, had its origin
and development in natural processes-natural processes which make no reference
to purpose, or progress, or sin, or salvation, or justice, or justification.
What does the Lord require? Fairness, compassion, and humility, said the
Hebrew prophet. What does evolution require? Evolution requires genetic
variation and natural selection. Perhaps you meant to ask: What does evolution
require of us? But the question makes no sense: you cannot derive Opinions
from Facts, you cannot say what ought to be through observation of what
is.
"This life is only a test," some anonymous jokester
has said. "If it were not a test, you would have been given further
instructions on where to go and what to do." Here, perhaps, we come
to the religious significance of the evolution of species. For we all
sense more or less urgently that this life is not just a test, that this
life is not just a dress rehearsal. Where shall we go? What shall we do?
Are we our brother's keeper and our sister's companion? What shall we
do about our capacity for evil and harm? What is the good society? Once
upon a time, those of us who are part of Western culture had a way of
answering these questions: we looked for answers in the writings and the
traditions of the People of God, for these were God's writings and God's
traditions, and they would tell us how God's people could find God's salvation,
which was, after all, God's plan for God's universe.
But Darwin's theory of evolution changed all that. About three and one-half
billion years ago, life began. Or maybe it began twice, once for metabolism
and once for replication. Either way, life started, not because of an
objective set of morals, values, purposes, and ethical standards, but
because of natural processes. Life became more complex and diverse, not
because of an objective set of morals, values, purposes, and ethical standards,
but because of natural processes. Human beings began to exist, not because
of an objective set of morals, values, purposes, and ethical standards,
but because of natural processes. And aside from the mechanical instructions
encoded into our genes, the universe has no instruction book for us. This
is the perspective of Darwin's theory of evolution. We call it evolution
and not progress, by the way, because in this view of life the universe
apparently provides no compass and no preferred direction.
Does this view of life mean that our lives have no purpose and no value?
If we do not look to the universe to provide our lives with objective
purpose and value, must we be resigned to hopelessness and despair?
We can have a sense of purpose and value in our lives in a number of ways:
First, we can decide to make ourselves agents of purpose
and value, providing our own sense of meaning and motivation. This can
be true for individuals and communities. We may believe that even if we
are not living in fulfillment of some cosmic or divine plan, our own plans
are enough.
Second, we may conclude that although the inanimate world of rocks and
dust and stars has little or no sense of purpose and value, other living
things may share with human beings some capacity for meaning and motivation.
We may not be able to derive Opinion from Fact when it comes to inanimate
matter, thus properly avoiding the Naturalistic Fallacy, but shall we
insist that there are no Opinions to be derived from Facts in the world
of living creatures? Shall we insist that only human beings have a sense
of self-interest? Some people may find a sense of meaning and purpose
by seeking to connect the human enterprise more mindfully and responsibly
to the larger community of life.
Third, we may adopt the point of view that purpose and value can be found
in more complex systems even though purpose and value are apparently absent
in the smaller entities that compose those systems. Years ago, when I
was studying physics, I believed that one could understand everything
about the universe by understanding its smallest parts. Whatever secrets
the universe held could be found through investigation of atoms and elementary
particles. And if such things as meaning and motivation could not be found
through investigation of these smallest parts, then how could they exist
anywhere else? And yet one could not predict the life and work of, say,
Martin Luther King, Jr., from a study of elementary particles. A striking
fact about the universe-striking to me, anyway-is that the structure and
behavior of large, complex systems are not determined by reference to
the smallest units of which they are composed. How can one predict the
immense wonders of carbon chemistry just by studying electrons? How can
one predict the evolution of complex living creatures just by studying
simple organic molecules? How can one predict the behavior of human beings
just by studying small groups of cells? How can one predict the structure
and behavior of human societies just by studying individual human beings?
What seems absent from the parts may be quite characteristic of a system
made up of those parts. Do we find little sense of objective purpose and
value in rocks and dust and stars, little sense of ingrained meaning and
motivation in a small number of amino acids and nucleotides? Does this
mean that purpose and value and meaning and motivation must be absent
in larger, more complex systems?
Finally, with some measure of intellectual humility, we may believe that
meaning and value are woven into the very fabric of the universe, but
in mysterious ways beyond the present limits of our knowing. Physicist
Emil Wiechert presented a context for this point of view in 1896 when
he wrote: "The universe is infinite in all directions, not only above
us in the large but also below us in the small. If we start from our human
scale of existence and explore the content of the universe further and
further, we finally arrive, both in the large and the small, at misty
distances where first our senses and then even our concepts fail us."
[2]
"There is grandeur in this view of life," wrote
Darwin at the very end of his book, The Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection. However we come to discern and acknowledge and live
into that sense of grandeur, however we come to discern and acknowledge
and live into a sense of meaning and purpose and value, may we do so with
reverence and zest.
1. William K. Frankena, Ethics, second edition (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 99.
2. Emil Wiechert, quoted in Infinite in All Directions
by Freeman Dyson (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), p. 36.
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