Darwin and Intelligent Design

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, October 16, 2005

Reading 1

From David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them.

The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles, exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance, of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument, a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.

Reading 2

“The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water”

by Mary Oliver

Inside that mud-hive, that gas-sponge,
That reeking leaf-yard,
That rippling dream-bowl, the leeches’
Flecked and swirling
Broth of life, as rich as Babylon,

The fists crack
Open and the wands of the lilies
Quicken, they rise

Like pale poles with their wrapped beaks of lace;
One day they tear the surface,
The next they break open
Over the dark water.
And there you are on the shore,

Fitful and thoughtful, trying
To attach them to an idea-
Some news of your own life.
But the lilies

Are slippery and wild- they are
Devoid of meaning, they are
Simply doing,
From the deepest
Spurs of their being,
What they are impelled to do
Every summer.
And so, dear sorrow, are you.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Genesis, Chapter 1

Charles Darwin, born 1809 in England knew these verses. And he knew the power of the church of England. But born to a family of Unitarians and Free Thinkers, Charles Darwin never believed in the orthodox God. If pressed, he called himself an agnostic.

Darwin, like his grandfather Erasmus Darwin was an Enlightenment man. He adored nature, he considered reason divine and he assumed progress in all things living.

Darwin’s maternal grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood of the pottery Wedgwoods, and that side of the family were all Unitarians…which in those days was a radical form of Christianity. Charles Darwin married one of his Wedgwood cousins…and so remained part of the educated gentry in a family of doctors and clergymen.

The influential minister to this Dissenting family in Birmingham in the 1780’s was Joseph Priestly..who was a philosopher, chemist and theologian. Wedgwood thought Priestly a genius and provided financial support for his scientific work.

Priestly’s theology was influential for three generations of intermarried Darwins and Wedgwoods. He aimed to restore Christianity to its pristine purity and make it a religion of universal happiness in this life and the next. For Priestly immortal souls do not exist any more than immaterial spirits in chemistry, nor do miracles or mysteries like the Trinity…God’s benevolence is expressed in a wholly material world, where the laws of nature hold sway and everything has a physical cause.

Darwin’s family held a robust, hopeful faith, reflecting the self-confidence of the new industrial elite. One of five children, Darwin attended a Unitarian School with his brother. They remained close throughout their lives. Darwin himself fathered 10 children and lived 71 years. In spite of his agnosticism, but because of the influence of the Origin of the Species and the efforts of his influential friends, Charles Darwin was buried, not in the family plot at the Unitarian cemetery, but at Westminister Abbey….with all the accompanying pomp and circumstance.

I share something of Darwin’s background with intention. For the continuing debate around his seminal work, emerges again and again around the question of world view and values. So it is important to know what world view and values he brought to his research.

It is important too to realize that Darwin was not a good student. He pursued neither a medical education nor a theologians’. He did not do well in languages or in the classics. What he pursued his whole life, was the study of living things. He was most prolifically, a collector. All the rage in England when he was in college, was beetling. And he was a master beetler.

His eventual opportunity to sail to South America on the Beagle was largely an effort to escape his father’s disappointments in his academic achievements….and a chance to do more collecting.

So, what would Charles Darwin say ( 125 yrs after his death) about the current attack on his theories of evolution and natural selection by those holding to the theory of Intelligent Design…I think he would say, “What you took you so long?”

Darwin knew well the dialogues of David Hume on Natural Religion written in 1779. Even then, men’s admiration for the complexity and accuracy of nature was attributed to an author, a designer, with a mind so grand, that the Deity must be similar to man and his intelligence similar to the human mind. There has long been a search for a Unified Theory.

Even the story-tellers of Genesis, hypothesized an anthropomorphic God who created (or designed) all of life as an author in the verbal tradition…”let there be light….and there was light”! The idea of intelligent design is nothing new.

Darwin knew that his theories were dangerous. He knew that religion would shake to the core. He knew that those who believed in the Biblical story of creation would attack him and his family…and they did. In fact, he waited twenty years to publish his findings from his voyage on the Beagle.

After all, he was only 25 years old by the end of the voyage. And he lacked confidence in his own intellectual abilities. He had even written in the Origin…”If it could be demonstrated that any complex organism existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” (I found this quote on an Intelligent Design Website)

And this is precisely the claim of the Intelligent Design critics. Intelligent Design is not the same argument as Creationism…it does not claim to hold to Biblical literalism, nor does it refute all of Darwin’s theory. The assertion of Intelligent Design is that with the new knowledge of molecular biology, we can see the amazing complexity of some cells…and that complexity cannot be reduced…to its initial part and still function…Those cells are complex in degree and kind…so that if you remove any part of the cell it will die…this is an argument of irreducible complexity.

What it challenges in Darwin’s theories is gradual evolutionary adaptation. If a cell is so complex…that it cannot function without all of its parts…how could its parts have been added or adapted gradually. The assumption then is that it is so awesomely complex that it could only have been designed by intelligence….it could only have been designed all of a piece.

From what I can understand as a non-scientist, whatever might be debatable or unresolved in Darwin’s theories, his fundamentals can be proven by evidence of the fossil record. And from what I can understand as a non-scientist, Intelligent Design cannot be proven. Also from what I can understand as a theologian, Intelligent Design…the existence of a Designer God can also, not be proven.

As H. Allan Orr wrote in the New Yorker critique of Intelligent Design, “It has come this far by faith.”

So why is this debate interesting? And why is it important to struggle to understand Intelligent Design? Obviously, it is important because the public school science curricula is at stake. The world view that is put forward in our public schools is at stake.

We must work at separating the apples from the oranges: the chemical from the spiritual, the provable from the mystery, the science from the religion.

Those who wish to promote their religiously based world view…have learned a fast juggle with apples and oranges.

Let me offer three questions that might help sort things out.

1. Does life have meaning? Or put another way, Is life devoid of meaning?
This is one crux of the issue at hand…perhaps the biggest crux. Intelligent Design advocates, like Creationism advocates, like Christian fundamental advocates want sincerely to believe that life has meaning. All life. They seek to assert God’s purposes into both religion and science. They are comforted by the idea of God as Designer…it makes sense to them. It seems to assure meaning in their lives

And they are fearful that without such a God busy in all disciplines, life will be or become devoid of meaning. They want a purpose-driven life.

It goes even a step further…they want to believe in an Intelligent Designer because it proves the existence of God. And we would likely agree that the beautiful complexity of nature in all of its wondrous diversity may be a sign of divinity at work in the world.

I love the fact that Darwin was a Unitarian. Who else would have had a mind open enough, curious enough, free thinking enough…to see, record, save, and believe what he saw with his own eyes…and call it Life, rather than God.

Our poet Mary Oliver, also a Unitarian Universalist, by the way, tells us that life is devoid of meaning. She tells us that the Lilies break open over the dark water…not for any purpose, not for any instruction, not for any reason other than this is what they are impelled to do….Is God the great impeller…no, this is nature, natural….life. And she reminds us- this is true also for us, and that it is a sorrow, that we also are fundamentally devoid of meaning…that we also do what we are impelled to do…that there is this creaturely part of us that is purely natural, pure nature, pure life.

2. My second question: A question posed, I think by this debate:
Is the material world all there is?
I think this is part of the fear of the Intelligent Design school. They feel that we Darwin types have made science into a God…that we see only the material reality and nothing more…that our poets liken us strictly to the animals…and that we believe there is nothing more.

Some of the debate is around political correctness- I mean scientific correctness…the Darwinian view has held sway for so long that, some may feel it’s not safe to criticize or question it….that careers may fall, if they stray from the accepted scientific paradigm. This, of course, would not be good science. This, of course, would not be what free-thinking tolerant Unitarian Universalist would want. We should not make science into a religion.

I do not think this is what Charles Darwin would want. In his later years, Darwin moved back to collecting and describing. He wrote many more books…on Orchids, on Worms… He expected his theory to be debated, he expected it to be challenged, he expected it to be contradictory to the theists.

I think he would want it to be debated in the schools. I think he would want students to consider other options, to synthesize new knowledge, to work at keeping apples and oranges clearly marked. He would continue to stand with the materialists, but he would understand the needs and motivations of the spiritualists. He would probably suggest, as I might, that they merely belong in different disciplines.

I think that the conversation about Intelligent Design is probably a conversation belonging to the philosophy of science or to metaphysics. I think we have come to this debate partly because public schools, not knowing how to handle separation of church and state have left the history and philosophy of religion totally out of the public school curricula. I was amazed to find in my seminary education the impact of religion on history. Thoroughly public school educated myself, I had missed a lot.

And even though I am suspicious of the motives of the Intelligent Design proponents, if they could admit that their subject is religion and not science, the conversation, put in the proper place within the curricula could add to our children’s cultural knowledge. It is good to learn how other’s view the world. We should not make science into a religion. They should not make religion into a science.

When conflict about ideas reaches such passionate levels it is often because some similarities exist. What similarities exist between the Darwinists and the Designists?

3. Are awe and humility the missing link between science and religion?
What parts of our world views do the Darwinists and the Intelligent Designers have in common? I think it is the human experience of awe and humility in the face of the beauty, complexity and infinite variety of life on earth that is our common link. Science love nature. Religion loves life.

Is such an argument from emotion possible…this sent me off on an addition set of questions.
Are human emotions reducible? Are they chemical? Are they designed? Are they material, are they spiritual? Does it matter?
All of us feel moved to tears as the evening light moves through the trees.
All of us feel a softening of our hearts when we hold an infant child.
All of feel amazed at the multiple and endless colors of green.

I have had the privilege of being with people as they are dying. And I am sure that we are more than material, chemical beings. I am sure that there is something which we call spirit. And I am sure that though each life passes away as part of its natural cycle, I am also sure that each life has meaning.

I can understand the desire to see God’s purpose in creation. I can understand the need to believe in a Grand Designer. Life is so unique, so multifaceted, so filled with shape and color and texture and smell and sound….it is impossible not to feel it as a miracle in moments….and yet I still agree with the poet…

Our material being is devoid of meaning….
But our spiritual being is something else.
Science and religion are compatible, and they are separate things. One need not threaten the other. One need not dominate. I love Unitarian Universalism because we can hold more than one truth at a time. We can feel awe and humility when we consider scientific material facts and experiences, and we can feel awe and humility when we touch the spirit within all life.

The diversity of life forms is a gift. Unearned, undeserved, natural wonders, the ordinary riches of the natural world bring meaning to our lives- to all our lives. Perhaps Divine purpose is to give humanity a purpose. Perhaps our grand purpose is feel awe and humility and to express it in our arts, our sciences, our religion, our love. Perhaps it’s all about awe and humility.

Amen