Thank God for Evolution

A Sermon Delivered by

The Rev. Thomas Schmidt

February 10, 2008

at the 

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Lowcountry

A few months ago, I received an e-mail from a man named Michael Zimmerman informing me that the weekend of February 8 - 10, this weekend, is “Evolution Weekend.” I went to the linked website and it turns out that this is in fact the 3rd annual such Evolution weekends and I learned that  Michael Zimmerman is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science at Butler University, in Indianapolis, Indiana.  I learned that “Evolution Weekend”  is actually a part of a larger effort to show the compatibility of evolutionary science and religious thought.  I decided that this was a worthy effort, so I signed up and our congregation is one of more than 600 congregations nationwide participating in the weekend in one way or another.  Not surprisingly, I noticed that the list of congregations participating is heavy with Unitarian Universalists.  In fact, of the seven groups listed on the website in South Carolina, 4 are UU, 2 are chapels associated with colleges, and one is United Church of Christ.  Talk about preaching to the converted, but still the cause is a worthy one and I am glad to be preaching on a subject so near and dear to me. 

It was around this same time that I received from above the title for the sermon.  Well, not really above, more like from everywhere, more specifically, my wireless internet connection.  Another e-mail, this time from previous guest speakers, the Rev. Michael Dowd and his partner Connie Barlow.  Their e-mail was announcing Rev. Dowd’s new book, “Thank God for Evolution.”  I decided then that I was going to borrow their title, and so I did. I should say that I have not yet read the book though I do plan to do so, perhaps even offering a public forum on the topic of science and religion. However, that is the future and this is now.  For those of you that may remember Rev. Dowd and Ms. Barlow, perhaps you also remember they invented a term for themselves, a word to describe their evolution based theology. The beauty of the word is that it can be pronounced different ways depending on the point of the view of the speaker.  Rev. Dowd called himself a “creatheist,” spelled c-r-e-a-t-h-e-i-s-t. Which is defined as a theist “who knows that the whole of reality is creative and that humans are an expression of this divine process.” Barlow says that she is a “creatheist,” “an atheist who who knows the exact same thing.”  What I liked most about the title of the book is that that it could easily be understood in more than one way, much like “creatheist”  and “creatheist.”  Depending on emphasis, the same phrase can be used as an order, “Thank God for Evolution!” or it can be used as an exclamation, “Thank God for evolution.”  

I’ll let you decide how to interpret it for yourself, but I tend to lean to the latter, “Thank God for evolution!” And frankly, I don’t care how one understands the title provided one is taking the subject of evolution seriously. Imagine a world without evolution.  Imagine it.  If you can imagine such a world, please see me after the service, because I am afraid I have had some difficulty in that department.  When I try to picture a world without evolution, I keep picturing a lifeless, water covered rock floating in space.  At first I start with stripe-less zebras, featherless birds, and  walking snakes, but then realize my mistake and take the evolutionary process back in time.  If evolution didn’t exist, there would be no zebras, because mammals wouldn’t exist, there would be no birds because their predecessors the dinosaurs would not exist, and snakes would not exist because reptiles never evolved because amphibians never evolved, etc. etc. All ending at the point that I could not even imagine such a world because I could not be here to imagine it, our species not evolving to have these wonderful, complicated mass of nerve cells we call a brain. So I say, “Thank God for Evolution!”

Many people credit Charles Darwin for discovering the process we call Evolution, however that is not completely true.  The idea of evolution had been around for some time, however it was not understood how evolution occurred.  What Darwin actually did was recognize the mechanism, natural selection, that allowed for evolution. Darwin recognized that living species adapted to changing conditions by passing on favorable traits to subsequent generations. Thank God for Darwin. However, that is not the end of the story.  The idea of evolution has itself evolved in the past 150 years, after all, Darwin had no idea what DNA was let alone the part it played in the process of evolution.  As we have learned more about the working of genetics and the finer points of evolution, more and more questions seem to emerge.  

One question in particular interests me very much, in large part because this question has serious spiritual and/or religious implications.  The question is this, “Is there a discernible direction to the evolution of life on this planet?”  And if so, what is that direction?  In his book, Evolution’s Arrow: The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity, author John Stewart points out, “A major reason why most evolutionary biologists think that evolution is not progressive is bacteria.  Bacteria seem to be at least as successful as humanity in purely evolutionary terms.  They have survived on this planet for over 3.5 billion years, they are still surviving, and they seem certain of continued survival, at least in the easily foreseeable future.”  Stewart himself does not agree, he argues that there is a clear direction, that  “evolutionary change progresses. . . that organisms improve as evolution unfolds in the sense that they become more competitive and better adapted than those they replace.”  Thus, the more complex the organism, the greater the advantage.  I think given the success of humans to colonize the entire planet, this position is equally defensible, however directionality has certain implications, namely that direction implies a  destination and/or a designer. In an article in the UU World magazine a few years back, Connie Barlow points out that “Direction doesn’t have to mean determined.” She prefers the term “evolutionary emergence” which, according to the article,  “she defines as that natural process by which more complex life forms spring from simpler ones.”  A position very similar to that of Stewarts.

For me, the Buddhist understanding of Conditioned Arising suggests the same idea. Conditioned Arising teaches us that everything that arises, everything that happens, does so because the conditions are right for it to happen. There is direction because the circumstances seem, at least from my own very limited point of view, lean in favor of ever greater complexity. 

And the circumstances seem to lean that way not because they are being directed by an outside force, but because circumstances being what they are, a more complex design simply has a greater chance of survival.  Because, what is complexity but ever greater cooperation. John Stewart writes, “The larger the scale of the cooperative organization, and the higher its evolvability, the more of the benefits of cooperation it will be able to exploit in its pursuit of evolutionary success.”  Cooperation, he believes, is the key to evolutionary success.  

Most likely the first living cell on the planet was the result of pro-biotic elements, forced by unfavorable conditions, unfavorable circumstances, to come together under a common membrane,  for mutual benefit. It was unfavorable conditions that created the circumstances that caused single cell organism to cooperate for mutual benefit, allowing for ever greater specialization, ever greater cooperation, ever greater chances for survival.  It is unfavorable conditions, not favorable conditions, unfavorable conditions that drive evolution.  That is why we see direction, from simple to complex, from less cooperation to greater cooperation. And why is this important to understand? Is this really good news? Do we still have reason to say “Thank God for Evolution!”

  Well, as Stewart points out, “The emergence of organisms who are conscious of the direction of evolution is one of the most important steps in the evolution of life on any planet. Once organisms discover the direction of evolution, they can use it to guide their own evolution. If they know where evolution is going, they can work out what will produce success in the future, and use this to plan how they will evolve.”  Essentially what Stewart is telling us is that our awareness of the process allows us to direct it. In fact, one can argue that we have been directing it for some time.  We have been directing the evolution of any number of plants and animals that are the staple of our food supply.  Humans continue to direct future evolutionary process through the destruction of rain forests, polluting our rives, oceans, land and air, and of course global climate change. Not fully aware of how human activities effect the whole of planetary life, humans have made any number of mistakes. Greater awareness allows us not only to correct those mistakes that can be corrected, but also direct our own evolution in the process.  Evolution, and most especially our awareness of evolution, allows us the opportunity to direct our own future. Our destiny is in our hands. It is our collective choice to adapt to changing conditions and survive, even thrive, or to continue on our current path and risk the fate of all living things unable to adapt fast enough to changing circumstances.

Evolution empowers us, however, as Stewart writes, “It is one thing for an organism to know what it has to do for evolutionary success.  It is another thing entirely to want to do something about it. ”An acceptance of evolutionary theory comes at a price. When one accept evolution as the process by which life adapts to a changes, with or without an understanding of divinity, When one accepts evolution as the process by which life adapts and grows, then one must pay the prices of taking responsibility for one’s own actions. Being aware of the process makes it very difficult to assume a power outside of nature will intervene to relieve our pain and suffering. The fact is, it has always been this way, but only now are the majority of people coming to be aware of it. And for many this is a painful process, but as Carl Jung so aptly stated, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” Our choice is to recognize that pain and work to minimize it, thus facilitating change, or to demonize those challenging the idea of evolution, shutting down communication, maximizing pain, making the shift in awareness all that much longer. Perhaps how we choose to respond to the choice ahead of us will be some indication just how evolved we truly are as a species.