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Evolution Sunday
February 10, 2008
Andrea Abbott

Today is Evolution Sunday. With our celebration of this day we join over 785 other religious communities across 50 states and nine countries on five continents, in setting aside a day to acknowledge a scientific theory, and to join in the defense of the freedom of the mind. Evolution weekend was begun in 2004 after the Grantsburg, Wisconsin, school board passed a series of anti-evolution policies, which inspired 11,000 Christian clergy members to participate in a letter which states that “religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.” It further urges school board members” to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge” and “that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.”

I am very appreciative of this church’s freedom of the pulpit, not that I thought I was in real danger, but, to contrast, a director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency was forced to resign after circulating information about a presentation critical of intelligent design and a Michigan clergyman was fired from his parish after participating in last year’s Evolution weekend. Scary stuff.

How interesting we should feel the need to join in solidarity, to set aside a day for this purpose. After all, to my knowledge we do not celebrate Gravity Sunday, though we claim Isaac Newton as we claim Charles Darwin. We do not celebrate The Earth Is Round Sunday or The Earth Goes Around the Sun Sunday. If we did, however, it is The Earth Goes Around the Sun Sunday which has the most in common with Evolution Sunday. Both scientific discoveries pushed humans out the exalted position they had established for themselves and, in both cases, humans responded by saying that it was God who had been insulted.

Fury over the theory of evolution has waxed and waned since Darwin first published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. He was himself a deist, a grandson of Josiah Wedgewood of pottery fame and fortune, quite a bit of fortune, who was Unitarian and part of the tightly knit circle of Unitarian families in the north of England. His other grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, a north of England physician, had himself been interested in what was then called “transmutation”, which the discovery and understanding of fossils had made of interest to men of the Enlightenment. Charles Darwin grew up in surroundings congenial to the exploration of the natural world. His close observation of the natural world, his patience in teasing out the meanings of what he observed and his ability to let his observation guide his theorizing was phenomenal. He was not the first person to try to unlock the mysteries of how life began and how it became differentiated. He was the heir to not only his grandfather but the other men of the enlightenment who used observation and experimentation rather than revelation to pursue knowledge. He was the person who after many patient years of observation and reading consolidated these findings into one theory. He knew that what he was doing would be controversial and, because of this, he put off publishing his work until he became aware that a younger man, Albert Wallace, was on the verge of scooping him.

Interestingly, the furor over evolution has waxed and waned over the years. Darwin himself was a man of kindly disposition, well-liked in his social circles. Perhaps this is the reason, that, though many were upset by his theories, many others rose to his defense. Certainly he was acclaimed during his life time and was buried in Westminster Abbey, renowned as a great scientist by the British nation.

For every denunciation of evolution, or Darwinism, there were as many staunch defenders. There were also competing theories that, as with Darwin, did not invoke miracles or a literal reading of the Bible to explain the mechanisms of changes in species since this was still open to debate until the more recent work in genetics and DNA. As always, both inside and outside scientific circles, the culture determined much of the argument about the debate. The feature of the theory which many seized on was that evolution and progress were part of the same parcel, and for mid-Victorian society, progress was the watchword. Whether they understood what Darwin was saying or not, his supporters saw that this theory could be used to explain everything from their own material success to the rationalization for the British Empire. Even if some of his supporters were not converting his theories to social Darwinism, the idea of progress, progress of humanity in general, was part of an expansive and optimistic age. Indeed, one might debate whether Darwin would have seen the patterns he saw had he not been part of that particular era. Improved technology, telescopes, microscopes, extending human vision outward and inward, undeniably paved the way, but do patterns in the world only become apparent when our minds are ready to receive them?

Darwin was indeed part of his era. Karl Marx admired Darwin, as well he might have since both men used the technique of observation of the world around them and a belief in the ability to discover patterns in that world to guide them. Darwin, however, admired capitalism and thought evolution fit well into its model. He also believed that the United States would inherit the mantle of empire from the British and this was also a reflection of our fitness to rule. In short, he was himself somewhat of a social Darwinist. Because social Darwinism lends itself so well to the defense of the status quo, the evolution wars have often resulted in extremely strange bedfellows. For example, the so-called monkey trial, or Scoped trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, which prosecuted a young biology teacher for teaching evolution. The trial was a set-up. The Tennessee ACLU wanted a show trial to defend the freedom to teach evolution. The merchants of Dayton, Tennessee wanted free publicity for their town. Voila.

In fact, the waves of opposition to Darwinism seem to have been triggered by fear of not being the fittest. The wave that inspired school boards to ban the teaching of evolution in the 1920’s was the result of greater mass education, as waves of immigrant children were placed in the schools. Opposition was also not a response to atheists and agnostics, a small number in American society, but to a liberalizing trend in Christianity. As mainline denominations became more supportive of science, more interested in social reform, as many felt threatened by large numbers of immigrants, increasing levels of education, urbanization, the change in mores, evangelicals responded by drawing lines and hardening positions. This is also the era that was the height of KKK activity and the fear of disease of both mind and body spreading from Europe. The emphasis on the literal truth of the Bible increased as people felt themselves more in need of a defense of who they were. They did not see progress as a good, but only as something leaving them further and further behind. Of course, the result of the Scopes trial was that Scopes was found guilty, fined $100, and the laws against teaching evolution stayed on the books until the 1960’s. However, the evolutionists stunningly won the war. Fundamentalists were portrayed as slope-browed knuckle walkers, while evolutionists came off in the national media as the upright wise men, thanks to the verbal slash and cut of Clarence Darrow and H.L. Menken.

This is still the case. In1981 Arkansas passed a bill mandating “balanced treatment” in school curriculums, which meant teaching Creationism, to the embarrassment of powerful people in Arkansas, such as the Junior Chamber of Commerce who had been trying to attract new industry, hi tech, to relocate to the state, people who would not want their children to be taught Creationism. Again, money and politics make strange bedfellows.

This is not 1925, but there are interesting similarities. Once more we have a society in the throes of rapid change. Globalization has further opened the world. The winners and losers are still in flux and the old verities are questioned. In such times, those who feel threatened are clinging to what they imagine is the past. Of course, the present is never the past and can never be the past. We always reinterpret the past, re-use it to make sense of the present. In many ways this fear accounts for the new fundamentalism, which is indeed a relatively new way of seeing things and it accounts for the reinvigorated opposition to evolution. It is one part of the parcel called control, a desire for control by those who feel life has denied them any status and those who use this fear and bitterness to manipulate them. I believe our responsibility is to try to understand the sense of isolation and despair that drives people to try to control, to censor, to shrink the world to a place they can understand. These people are often our neighbors, our acquaintances, our friends and family. We share the same communities. When did knowledge and inquiry become their enemies? What has happened that the glory of the world has passed them by?

Any scientist knows we do not know. This is the point, really, to embrace a method that never promises ultimate knowledge, but that says we are part of the process. We believe that our responsibility is to seek truth, not to believe in a God who will periodically swoop in, reveal and threaten those who do not believe. To embrace the pursuit of knowledge is to become humble, to know we are not finished. This may be part of evolution. We have not evolved, and may never evolve enough to understand the universe of which we are a very small part. What we stand for on Evolution Sunday is the right to keep learning, the right to keep all our options open, the right to inquiry without fear of loss of career, of reputation, of life. The evolution of the human race depends on free inquiry.

Evolution wars sounds like something to be won or lost, sounds like something where someone is wrong and someone else is right, but right is often more like a snapshot than a film. What’s right at one point is so very wrong later. We say we seek the truth, but it’s a wily beast, always a little ahead of us. If God created the world, you’ve got to really admire Her work, some of the frills along the California coast, for example, or a butterfly wing. If the evolutionists are right, this is hardly the end of religion. We are finite, mortal beings trying to see a system of infinite immortal proportions. Who is there to deny the possibility of a supreme being, a spirit, which animates the world and brings meaning and order to the cosmos, even if we can’t see it? Who can see the sand dollar, the daisy and not be struck with awe and the intricacy and beauty revealed there? But if we are indeed an accident of chemistry and electricity, if there is no more reason for our existence than a chance moment which set in motion the swirling cosmos, then all the more reason for us to stand in awe. The capacity for wonder, for love, for care for the only world we have, is something that depends on no supernatural being. We have no reason for despair, for nihilism. What is around us is incredible, magnificent, and ours to cherish.

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