Darwin Day / Evolution Sunday

Rev. Paul Beckel

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

February 4, 2007

This week we celebrate the 198^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin! This is not an attempt to usher Darwin into sainthood (even though he had Unitarian roots) and this is not an attempt to suggest that Darwin’s limited understanding of evolution was the high point or the end point of evolutionary theory.

Darwin is not a saint; he is a symbol. Like Newton and Einstein he was a fallible human being with remarkable insight to see the world in a new way... and then not just to speculate, but to test his insight against the evidence of the world around him. Still, despite the rigorous analysis of and overwhelming evidence for his theories, he has become today a symbol of not only the glories of scientific investigation but of the contortions that many go through to discredit him, and the anxieties which are so unnecessarily provoked at his name.

Today and next week hundreds of congregations across the country are celebrating “Evolution Sunday” in an effort to counter the strange impression that has arisen that science and religion must be adversaries.

Sadly, even the United States National Park Service is not immune to the controversy. For example, at the Grand Canyon, the official bookstore sells a book called A Different View which presents a Creationist account of the origins of the Canyon which, it explains, is the result of the great biblical flood, which occurred a few thousand years ago. The park’s own materials, I’m happy to say, provide a geological explanation instead, describing the gradual erosion that has taken place over millions of years.

You’ll notice that the title of the book (A Different View) is not a bold declamation of the glories of God’s creation. No instead it coyly suggests that different perspectives are of value in an open dialogue. Today I would like to speak about the nature of open dialogue, which you’ve heard me praise on countless occasions. Yes, I have extolled the benefits of free speech such that dissenting opinions, rude humor, imaginary speculations, and even utter nonsense have the right to be presented. But opinion, humor, and fantasy need to be called what they are.

Today we celebrate Darwin’s Birthday and Evolution Sunday because we can celebrate, whether we are atheists or Christians, the broader principle that revelation is not sealed. Whether we think of the universe as the creation of a divine being or an impersonal natural process, we understand that there is more to learn, that the unfolding of creation will reveal still more to us. And it will be marvelous to behold.

GATHERING SONG            Dark of Winter                             #55

READING

Evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins is puzzled by his critics who say that without god, life is meaningless. He responds this way:

“...The scientific worldview is a poetic worldview, it is almost a transcendental worldview. We are amazingly privileged to be born at all and to be granted a few decades -- before we die forever -- in which we can understand, appreciate and enjoy the universe. And those of us fortunate enough to be living today are even more privileged than those of earlier times. We have the benefit of those earlier centuries of scientific exploration. Through no talent of our own, we have the privilege of knowing far more than past centuries. Aristotle would be blown away by what any schoolchild could tell him today. That's the kind of privileged century in which we live. That's what gives my life meaning. And the fact that my life is finite, and that it's the only life I've got, makes me all the more eager to get up each morning and set about the business of understanding more about the world into which I am so privileged to have been born.”

MEDITATION/MUSIC        [pictures beginning in the Grand Canyon and panning away into space and distant galaxies, thanks to the Hubble Telescope]

READINGS                           from The Darwin Awards, collected by Wendy Northcutt

The Darwin Awards are presented to those who improve the human gene pool by taking themselves out of it. That is, Darwin Awards are for people who have the capacity to know better, and who die doing stupid things. The Darwin Awards are crass and grossly insensitive. You may wonder who could see a silver lining to anyone’s untimely demise. But they are really just mini morality plays, not terribly different from children’s fables, or The Far Side cartoons, or any history, fiction, or film to which we look, morbidly curious, to see whether it is true that we get what we deserve in life. Here are a few Darwin Award winners:

At the Grand Canyon, tourists toss coins beyond the fenced viewing area. While many coins fall thousands of feet to the valley below, many pile up on ledges just out of reach. One intrepid man climbed the fence, leapt to one of the towering ledges, and filled a bag with coins. But attempting to jump back with a heavy bag of coins turned out to be his last miscalculation.

A Ukrainian man discovered that he could kill fish in the river that flowed past his home with an electric current connected to his domestic power supply. When the fish were floating belly-up, he waded into the water without removing the live wire.

An unemployed firefighter attempting to prove his skills set a house on fire only to be trapped inside.

A man practicing with an old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifle tapped in the gunpowder, then found it wouldn’t fire. So, flicking his cigarette lighter to see better, he looked down the barrel.

A bird lover from Toronto kept feeders on his apartment balcony. To refill one feeder, hanging above his 23rd story balcony, he stood on a rolling swivel chair.

For safety, a man kept a loaded .38 pistol on his bedside table. One night hearing the phone ring, he reached for the light for the very last time.

Ski lift towers are covered with thick pads to protect wayward skiers who might hit one on the way down. Two men snuck onto a ski hill late one night, tore the safety padding from a pole, and climbed up the hill. Using the padding as a toboggan, they cruised down at high speed only to hit the pole from which they had stolen the padding.

At Yosemite, parachuting from the cliffs is banned. But a group of enthusiasts attempting to prove the sport can be done safely, negotiated with park officials to the following terms: officials consented to a demonstration jump, and the jumpers agreed to be arrested and have their equipment confiscated when they landed. Unfortunately, one jumper, not wanting her expensive parachute to be confiscated, borrowed a cheaper chute, only to find out too late that she did not know where the rip cord was located.

And finally: When the collection plates were passed at All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi, a man in the pews began stashing hands full of money into his pockets. When spotted, he ran from the church onto a busy highway where he was killed by a passing bus. Interpretations vary over whether this was an act of God.

Will the ushers please come forward to receive the morning offering?

MESSAGE

I received a scathing email this week from someone I do not know who asked me, or I should say accused me, with the question, “You call yourself a Christian?!!” I’m not sure why this person was interested in what I call myself, nor do I have any idea why he thought the label inappropriate. Perhaps he had seen something unorthodox on our website indicating that I do not share his point of view on every aspect of christianity. I’d like to say that the question is unimportant, but I do at times have to consider it seriously, for example when I wanted to sign a letter identified as being from Christian clergy. This letter, now signed by over 10,000 ministers, was written in an attempt to dispel the misunderstanding that christianity and evolutionary theory are incompatible.^[1]

I did choose to sign the letter, but, wanting to do this with integrity, I took pains a few months ago to describe in some detail what I mean when I call myself a christian. If you care, you can read about it on the website.[2] In the meantime, this brings us to our topic for today, not the definitions of christianities, but the nature of scientific investigation. And one of the characteristic differences between science and non-science is that science uses words in a relatively consistent and unambiguous manner, such that when two scientists use the same word, we can be fairly sure that they are talking about the same thing.

When using words like God or Christianity, in contrast, two people rarely mean the same thing. And it’s not uncommon to hear a person give these terms contradictory meanings from one sentence to the next. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. Consider this story, which plays with the meaning of having different views:

Two men, both seriously ill, shared a hospital room. One was able to sit up in bed for an hour each day. The other man spent all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their families, their homes, their jobs, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon when the one could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window. The man in the other bed began to live for these times when his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amid flowers of every color, and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.  As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, his roommate would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man couldn't hear the band – he could see it in his mind's eye as his friend portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days and weeks passed. One morning, the nurse arrived to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved across the room. The nurse moved the beds, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed – and found that it faced a blank wall.

When the nurse returned he asked what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window. The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall. She said, "Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you."

==

Is it OK to play tricks in order to make one another feel better? If you heard me speak last week on the topic of Pain, you might think that I think it is OK. After all, I said, placebos often work, alternative treatments can relieve pain, and even proven medical therapies can work without us really understanding why. So, I said, maybe sometimes it’s ok to be fooled into healing. And sometimes it’s not.

Here’s another example from the Darwin Awards: A Scottish follower of “breatharianism” met her demise when she followed the advice of the guru who claimed that one could feed on the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in the air. That is, if you breathe properly you would never need to eat or drink again. When confronted with the death of her follower the cult leader explained that the death was not caused by lack of food, but by a spiritual deficit.

This, of course, is quackery: pseudoscientific nonsense being sold with no disclaimer whatever of its origins or methods or likelihood of success. Yes, quackery, like placebo, can coincide with healing. It can also coincide with death. The difference between science-based medicine and quackery is not always clear, but quackery promises benefits that cannot reasonably be expected to occur, and it adds the risk that patients may forego treatments that are more likely to help them.

Quackery, and pseudoscience in general, exists because scientific ignorance permits practicioners to make claims that they don’t understand. Ignorance also makes it likely that many of us will fall for political and commercial charades which claim to be based in science. In Doonesbury, Gary Trudeau skewers this phenomenon with the term “situational science.” He says, “Situational science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts."

It’s a ploy used by tobacco companies to tell us that smoking isn’t dangerous, by the Bush administration to tell us that abstinence-only education prevents teen sex, and by a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly who re-assured us this week that climate cannot be affected by human activity because it is in the hands of a higher power.

Pseudoscience begins with its conclusion already determined, and looks only for data that support the desired conclusion. Pseudoscience is indifferent to criteria of valid evidence, and puts no stock in controlled, repeatable scientific experiments.

Pseudoscience argues from ignorance. Instead of arguing from what we know, pseudoscientists base their claims in the fact that there are things we don’t know. For example, if we don’t know what that thing is in the sky, they’ll insist it can only mean that aliens are watching us. Pseudoscientists love the phrase "Science cannot explain." And they deliberately ignore what IS known in order to create a false sense of mystery. So, for example, since there are gaps in the fossil record, Darwin and his followers are sufficiently proven to be the spawn of Satan, and the only appropriate conclusion is that Creationism should be taught in public schools.

Now science, as I’m extolling it today, is not an easy standard to live by. It “is like a high peak of intellectual integrity, fairness, and rationality. The peak is slippery and smooth. It requires a tremendous effort to remain near it.

…Being wrong or mistaken is unavoidable; we are all human, and we all commit errors and blunders. True scientists, however, are alert to the possibility of blunder and are quick to correct mistakes. Pseudoscientists do not. In fact, a short definition of pseudoscience is "a method for excusing, defending, and preserving errors." [3]

==

It is an odd claim, but a frighteningly effective one, this clever rhetorical twist that intellectual freedom, free speech, tolerance for diversity and dissent (all great buzzwords of the left) are now used to advance -- as science -- ideas that have no scientific basis whatsoever. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins reminds us, though, that "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong."[4] He continues: “What is wrong with the apparently sweet reasonableness of "it is only fair to teach both sides"? The answer is simple. This is not a scientific controversy at all. It no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for "both theories" would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened?”

Groundhog day falls in the same realm. Is there a connection between animal behavior and the weather? Of course. But can we make accurate predictions based on the corrupted formula that has been handed down to us in myth? Of course not.

Consider the physics lab exercise[5] in which students learning to use calipers to make fine measurements were told to take multiple measurements of a cylinder’s diameter. They were told that the average of their measurements would be very close to a certain number. One student went about the assignment, carefully measuring the diameter. Quickly she became anxious, because no matter how careful she was, the data refused to come out as she’d been instructed they would. She assumed it was some deficit in her laboratory skills, and to evade embarrassment she fudged the data to be in accord with expectations. In the end it turned out nearly all the students, working independently, had fudged their data. The professor then revealed that the cylinders issued were nowhere near the dimensions he’d claimed. The moral of the teacher’s exercise, of course, was that the numbers are what they are. It doesn’t matter who says otherwise (the President, the Pope), or what their motives are (even if their motives are for good). If you want to know the diameter of the cylinder, you must ask the cylinder, not the professor.

==

The world of science has its share of deliberate frauds, honest mistakes, garbled accounts, misinterpretations, and stupid blunders. Another Darwin Award winner was a Californian astronomer watching a meteor shower from home who was bothered by the distraction of a nearby streetlight. So he pried off the inspection plate with pliers, and began to cut the 4000 Volt wire with a saw.

How can people be so stupid? Albert Einstein wrote: “Only two things are infinite—the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not so sure about the universe.”

If evolution weeds out regressive characteristics, wouldn’t stupidity be gone by now? Not necessarily. Consider the strange disease, sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia continues to plague the human gene pool even though it kills thousands of people. Why? Because the recessive sickle-cell gene gives people immunity to malaria. Maybe we have genes that make us curious or give us courage to take risks. But put those potentially helpful genes together in the wrong context and you’re in trouble.

==

Unitarian Universalists, it is said, read ahead in the hymnbook because we cannot bear to sing or say things that we don’t ardently believe. To whatever extent this is true it is unfortunate.  Understanding, whether scientific or religious, is not a matter of belief, but how we use our understanding. We don’t need to believe in a virgin birth in order to appreciate the beauty of the stained glass behind me. We don’t need to believe that the light of the chalice is literally carried in our hearts when we leave in order to appreciate the drama and the poetry of the ritual. In short, healing can often be an aesthetic as much as a medical phenomenon. And that’s ok. But I do want my doctor to read ahead in the drug disclaimers to make sure that what she prescribes is not going to kill me.

Charles Darwin wrote, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” If we take this seriously, then we understand that overwhelming strength will not guarantee our survival or success. But intelligence will not save us either. In order to adapt effectively we need not just science but a radiant weaving of both fact and meaning... close observation coupled with humble appreciative wonder.

==

I’m not troubled by the horrific violence done to Wile E. Coyote at the Grand Canyon. Sometimes it even makes me laugh. I laugh because it’s a cartoon. And I identify with the Roadrunner. And I’m happy when I get away from that Coyote. I also laugh because I identify with the Coyote, relentlessly trying to catch an elusive spirit.

I have great appreciation for these characters and the trickster priests of myriad cultures who provide us with alternative perspectives on life. The blind man in the hospital bed, The Far Side characters making fatal miscalculations. I would not be troubled if they sold Roadrunner videos and The Far Side comics at the Grand Canyon bookstore. But the book called A Different View, even though it is sold in the “inspirational” section, troubles me. They may argue that since books about Native American traditions get a place on the shelf, why not broaden our perspectives? But no one is pretending that Native American creation myths are supported by empirical evidence. No one is selling these stories as descriptions of natural phenomena.

Obviously I support the right of those who wish to publish and sell and proclaim dissenting views about the age and origins of the Grand Canyon. But in determining truth, meaning, and appropriateness, context is all-important. (Where is this book sold, and by whom?)

When we come to stand at the edge of the abyss and we look for an inspirational vision, we can find meaning and even purpose for our lives by hearing the stories told by the native peoples whose roots are in that land. Or we can probably even take inspiration from stories told by our sightless friends. But we’d best not ask them to help us leap to nearby ledges.

==

In closing: you can tell I’m a fan of Richard Dawkins, but let me point out that I disagree with him on at least one point. Dawkins criticizes the Intelligent Design people for saying that there had to be a creator...well, Dawkins says, then you have to explain who created the creator. I disagree with this. I think it’s easy enough to explain as some Native Americans do, describing the Earth as resting on the back of a turtle. If you ask what is the turtle resting on, the answer is easy: it’s turtles all the way down.

CLOSING HYMN                 Come Sing a Song with Me    #346