A Great Emancipator: Charles Darwin

The Rev. Mark Ward, Minister
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

Asheville, NC

February 15, 2009

READING

From On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us. . . .

Thus from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object of which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of higher animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

SERMON

Holed up with about a dozen other science writers in a laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1996, I got a first-hand look at the amazing world that we are heir to, thanks in part to Charles Darwin. In the space of a week we were sped along a tour of biology, beginning at the state it was in Darwin’s time, when living cells were first identified, to the latest techniques of modern genomics. Manipulating tiny amounts of seemingly indistinguishable clear liquids we identified and expressed the structures of cells, isolated DNA, used polymerase chain reaction to amplify it, sequenced the genes on film-like strips and then, using a centralized computer data base, identified the life form we had torn apart.  It was dictyostelium, a slime mold.

For a person who, though an avid lover of science, had never taken so much as a college biology course, it was quite a ride. And yet the fact that someone as unknowledgeable as me was able to do it was evidence of how matter-of-fact this amazing science had become.

Such is the state of biology today, light years from the naturalists of Darwin’s time who combed the countryside looking for curious beetles. The truth is that most of what goes on in those gleaming labs is so far beyond the ken of most us that it may as well be sorcery. So, I suppose, it’s little wonder that so many seem to shake their heads and turn away when reports of biologists’ findings come up. How else do we explain polls that show that in the United States some half of those surveyed believe that the world was created six millennia ago in the space of a week, and that evolution is a mere theory?

A mere theory? You’re darned tooting, and one of the most successful theories in the history of science. For scientists today there is something quaint and amusing about talk of the “debate” over evolution. The “debate” over the fact of evolution ended a century ago, from a scientific perspective. What has kept scientists busy is the question of how evolution occurred, and it turns out, for all that Darwin didn’t know, couldn’t know, he was surprisingly close to the truth.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was one of the key pieces, together with the genetic theories of the Moravian monk Gregor Mendel, that created the modern synthesis in biology in the mid 20th century that resulted in an explosive growth in the understanding of how life works.

Even today, evolution is no dusty 19th century idea. It is happening all around us. Why, after all, do we worry so much about deadly microbes? They have proven adept at evolving ways to defeat the antibiotics we throw at them. It turns out that where Darwin was wrong is being too conservative in his belief that evolution happens infrequently and that life forms need hundreds or thousands of years to evolve. In recent decades, scientists have recorded evolution – the changing of physical features over time and budding off of new species – in any number of plants and animals, including the finches of the Galapagos Islands that Darwin himself studied.

For his impact on science alone, Charles Darwin qualifies as a “great emancipator.” His work contributed to scientific advancements that have freed humankind of deprivation and early death. But there is more, and it has to do with why this 19th century explorer and naturalist, whose face appears on the British 10-pound note, remains one of the most identifiable figures in the history of science. As important as his scientific contributions were, it is the consequences his theory suggested for religion that have sparked the greatest controversy. Indeed, the figure of Darwin serves as a symbol of a persistent divide in American culture with deep, theological roots. Toss his name into mixed company and watch the two sides line up.

I want to suggest today that, while I speak from a position firmly rooted in one side of that debate, I also believe that the religious consequences of what Charles Darwin taught us are not as unipolar as they are sometimes made to appear, and that for people of good will from many perspectives, what Darwin described truly can free us.

Let’s begin with one of the central tenets of Darwin’s thought, the proposition that he once wrote to a friend felt like “confessing a murder.” That is, simply, that species change over time. What made the idea so fearsome to Darwin is that it contradicted conventional wisdom at the time as well as long standing tenets in philosophy and the teachings of the Bible. Plato argued famously that the objects of the world are but poor copies of perfect and eternal forms, and the Bible describes the creation of the world and everything in it as a one-time event. The thought was that while it was true that animals could change within species – there are, for example, dozens of varieties of dogs – species themselves did not change.

This was the understanding that Darwin had when he left at the age of 22, an indifferent Cambridge student pointed to a career as a country parson, on a five-year overseas trip. Darwin had always had a passion for collecting interesting creatures, so early in the journey he assigned himself the task of ship’s naturalist.

As the ship, the Beagle, made stops along the coast of South America, Darwin would set out on gathering expeditions. He came upon many things – birds, lizards, insects – that he had never seen before. He also had the opportunity to excavate fossils of giant sloths and such. It intrigued him that many of the fossilized animals, though different, bore striking resemblances to present-day creatures. And he noticed how similar kinds of animals, though different species, seemed to cluster in places. This was especially true among things like mockingbirds and tortoises on the Galapagos Islands.

No one knows exactly when, but at some point his mind tipped in favor of the notion of what he called “transmutation” of species, that species of plants and animals somehow emerge, change over time, and eventually vanish from the scene. It wasn’t such an odd idea, really. His grandfather, Eramus Darwin, a wild-eyed Unitarian, had proposed it decades before, as had others. By the time Darwin arrived home he had given up thoughts of ministry and decided to explore it further.

He distributed some of his collection to respected scientists for their opinions and set to work testing his theory. He spent eight years studying barnacles, raised pigeons and solicited all manner of rare and odd creatures from around the world. Meanwhile, he puzzled over the answer to a larger question: How do species change over time?

New species didn’t just pop into existence. If present-day animals bear such a strong resemblance to extinct creatures it made sense that they must have arisen from their lineage. He also found clues in bones of vestigial limbs in snakes and in the embryos of mammals, which, at different stages in development, have features from more primitive animals, such as the gill slits of fish. It was clear that today’s array of living things had arisen from early things. But why had they changed?

He posited that creatures somehow adapted themselves to their circumstances, and that as circumstances changed, they changed, but then he was back to how. What was the mechanism? His answer was natural selection.

Now this term “natural selection” can be confusing because in many people’s minds selection is a purposeful act, something done with intention. In Darwin’s mind, natural selection was anything but. Species that endure are simply those that are successful, and the key to a living thing’s success is its ability to reproduce itself. Those who reproduce pass their traits along. Successful traits are those that help a plant or animal prevail in the competition for resources.

As we know, no product of sexual reproduction is an exact copy of its parents. There are variations in each new generation – a longer tail, say, or a firmer stem. Many of those variations have no impact on the daughter animals or plants, but some do. They help the animal stay an extra step ahead of predators or the plant send a tendril further into the light. Those living things with advantageous adaptations are more likely to survive to reproduce and pass those traits on to future generations. No one – no animal, no plant – chooses to make a variation. It just happens, and it either helps or it doesn’t.

What Darwin’s contemporaries, including many supporters, had the hardest time grasping was that there is no moral dimension to this process. The “survival of the fittest,” as others labeled it, was not a matter of nature winnowing away the weak, leaving only the strong to survive. Traits that helped an animal under certain conditions might hurt it when conditions changed. Life is not ever perfecting itself, heading for some grand apotheosis. It’s only doing the best that it can.

And of all that Darwin described it was this that his critics found most upsetting. It is disturbing enough to assert that we are descended from apes, or, even better, from stealthy, mice-like proto-mammals scurrying from under the feet of dinosaurs. It is quite another thing to declare that there is no arrow to the universe, no plan for creation, that the passing of time is simply one darned thing after another.

Even sympathetic observers at the time pointed out that Darwin’s theory didn’t seem to make much room for the God of the Bible who created all the creatures on Earth and blew the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils. And yet in truth, as the naturalist David Quammen points out, “The existence of God is not what Darwin’s theory of evolution challenges. What it challenges is the supposed godliness of (humankind) – the conviction that we above all other life forms are spiritually elevated, divinely favored, possessed of an immaterial and immortal essence, such that we have special prospects for eternity, special status in the expectations of God, special rights and responsibilities on Earth.” (The Reluctant Mr. Darwin)

We may be organized in some pretty snazzy ways – big brains, agile hands, opposable thumbs – but in the scope of the universe we are not of any greater consequence than the mosquitoes we slap, the dandelions we pull from the lawn, or that slime mold I carved up one summer.

That’s quite a come down, when you think of it. And it’s certainly understandable how it upset people whose faith was grounded in the ancient story of Genesis. We can be sympathetic, but in the end there’s not much more to say than: Sorry, folks. That’s just the way it is. It’s been sad over the last century and a half to watch preachers rant on the godlessness of evolution, ending with the demonizing of Charles Darwin, poor fellow.

In that time there has been much debate about Darwin’s own religious faith. We know that he had studied theology, but he was never a regular church attender after returning from his expedition on The Beagle. As a rule, he avoided discussions on the subject of religion, although when visited by a pair of freethinkers after he had made his name, he is said to have commented that, “I never gave up Christianity until I was 40 years of age.”

It was not so much science as family tragedies – the deaths of his father and his adored daughter Annie – that shook his belief. He could not subscribe to a faith that taught that his good, though unbelieving father was consigned to hell, nor could he love a God who took his beloved child. In an autobiography he wrote for his family, he recorded that “disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.” Still, he hedged his bets. On the point of whether it was possible that a God of some kind existed he declared himself “an agnostic.”

Ultimately, Darwin’s science set him free, free of the need to meet others’ expectations, able to pursue knowledge on its own terms. And it sets us free as well: free of the dogmatism of Biblical literalism, letting us appreciate that rich text with its poetry and stories that evoke the struggles to which all humans are prey; free of the oppressive weight surrounding the mistaken notion that we have some special place in and special responsibility for creation.

Let’s face it, folks: we are not in charge, and if we get to tinkering, as the naturalist Aldo Leopold put it, we would be wise to save the parts. Darwin’s work invites us to throw off our anthropocentric focus – that annoying habit we have of putting ourselves us at the center of all things – and to open ourselves to a very different spirituality, one that embeds us deeply in the web of life: not over it but, like everything else around us, arisen from it.

There is irony in the criticism that Darwin’s work cheapened the estimation of humankind, leaving our lives bereft of meaning, when in fact the opposite is true. Darwin was right to insist that “there is grandeur in this view of life,” a view that leads us to see humankind not as somehow special above all other living things, but as creatures gifted with intelligence and compassion who are inextricably interwoven in life’s grand web.

It is an understanding that sets us free in another way by urging that we seek meaning not in mystical realms outside of the world but in the lives that are given to us. It urges that we come to understand that our lives and hopes are realized in relationship: relationship to each other and to the amazing variety of living things with which we share the planet.

The great questions of ultimacy still await us, invite speculation and debate, but they are centered in a different understanding of where we fit in the scheme of things. Just as Darwin, at the close of his great work, On the Origin of Species, excitedly speculated on where his theories might take science, we, too, can imagine new and fruitful directions for our own religious search.

Together with Abraham Lincoln, who not only freed the slaves, but also freed the nation to see itself as one in sympathy and peace, Charles Darwin deserves the title as a Great Emancipator. And we, who nurture the hope and promise of a free faith, acknowledge our debt to them both on this the 200th anniversary of their births.

May they both inspire us all to lives of courage and compassion that we, too, may be the bearers of freedom and of hope.