"Humanity's Evolutionary Purpose"

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
February 7, 2010

Reading: "Answers within us explore faith and transcend science" by Vern Barnet
 “Here’s a theological experiment you can do in your kitchen. First some science. Bring water to boil and pour it into a container into which you mix as much salt as will dissolve. Pour the solution into a clean jar and suspend a thread into the water from a pencil resting on the rim. Cover the mouth of the jar with paper and tape it shut. Let sit for 15 minutes, then swish. After 15 minutes more, repeat. Swish one last time an hour later. Then for several days watch cubic crystals grow on the string.

You can observe that even inanimate matter like NaCl, sodium chloride (salt), has what appears to be a self-organizing, self-replicating property. Since it is nearly summer, it is pleasant to think about the six-sided snowflake, shaped by the physical properties of the water molecule, another self-organizing crystal. Even DNA, a basic material and set of instructions for life, is crystal-like, and organizes itself and directs the processes of growth.

So much for science. Now the theology. You have to look not at the salt crystal, but within yourself.

Is God directing the salt to move toward the thread and grow? Did God design H2O so that water crystals would be so beautiful and varied? When researchers in 1953 threw some watery chemicals together and passed electric charge through the mix and amino acids developed, was that accidental or orchestrated by God? Is it chance that water is liquid in exactly the tiny range (0-100° C), less than one millionth of the temperature spectrum, that makes life as we know it possible?

We can agree on the data. But the answers you find within yourself to these questions may not convince others. The inner answers explore the realm of faith, not facts. They transcend science.

When those few irresponsible scientists say evolution is accidental, undirected and purposeless, they are speaking theologically, not scientifically. And when Intelligent Design folks look at the same evidence and find it to be intelligently designed, they are not doing science; they are doing theology. One reader sent me a theory of Stupid Design to account for errors in human anatomy. Intelligent or stupid? It’s a theological, not scientific, question.

To cut to the chase, as another reader wrote, the real question is “whether life has meaning or not.”

I think the ID folks are saying something with their body language liberals need to hear. They are saying that what they see as design shows that the universe has purpose, life has meaning, there is something beyond our ordinary pursuits, and we have a place in the plan. Our super-secularistic society gives us few opportunities to discuss such large questions, so they arise in strange places, perhaps even in kitchens.”

Sermon            Humanity’s Evolutionary Purpose                                                          Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
Hearing Rabbi Barr last week – wasn’t he wonderful? – motivated me to begin today with a story from the book of Jeremiah out of the Tanakh, that is, the Hebrew Scriptures: “In the waning days of the kingdom of Judah, surrounded by enemies intending to attack, corrupted from within by a lack of will, a lack of clarity, and a lack of identity, the prophet Jeremiah addressed the people of Israel time and again, calling them back to who they were meant to be. On one occasion he said:

Then I went down to the potter's house, and found him working at the wheel. And if the vessel he was making was spoiled, as happens to clay in the potter's hands, he would make it into another vessel, such as the potter saw fit to make. Then the word of the Holy One came to me, “O House of Israel, can I not deal with you like this potter?” says the Holy One. “Just like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”

Conservative Jewish commentaries interpret this passage to mean people “are completely inert and absolutely in God’s control; [that] God molds us according to God’s absolute will- -and we are simply the passive recipients of God’s might, omniscience, total knowledge, and force.”   I heard a similar theological viewpoint at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the other day where one person said, “I am my own biggest problem.  Every time I take control of something in my life, I just hurt someone.  From now on I plan to let go and let God.”   That speaker’s experience had taught her that left to her own devices she will just muck things up.  She had come to believe that God has a plan for her and if she could just keep her flawed self out of God's way, things would turn out better.

Interpreting the prophet Jeremiah in that fashion leaves us without much room for human agency.  Both Rabbi Barr’s humanistic Judaism and Unitarian Universalism see people in a little better light.  We don’t believe people are inherently either good or bad, or as in the clay metaphor, just inert and without anything to contribute to our own shaping.  We believe people have much to contribute, that we can be wise and creative, and that we must act responsibly in our own interests and together for the good of us all.

A naturalistic view of the origin of humanity is that we evolved, along with all the other plants and animals.  The story of our creation, from the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, when for 2 billion years all there was was light, through the formation of the stars and planets and finally the coming together of chemicals and energy for the beginning of life on earth is truly an incredible and marvelous tale.  Not just the plants and animals, but the entire universe, has evolved according to a profound symmetry which is somehow present inside each and every one of us.  “Our minds, our bodies, our emotions, and our way of being in the world are the universe itself organized into consciousness. We are the universe organizing itself and erupting into consciousness.”

The evolution story is seen by many as the scientific account of creation.  When it was first popularized, just less than 150 years ago now, it threatened to undermine belief in God, who according to the Hebrew Scriptures, created the world.  The battle between evolution and the bible, science and religion, has raged ever since.  Now it’s true many see no need for intervention by an Intelligent Designer in evolution, given the evidence that things seem to have evolved according to logical principles quite well on their own, thank you.
But evolution doesn’t have to exclude God.  Some see the process of evolution itself as God.   There is a whole school of theology where God is in the process of life, not necessarily “intervening” in the sense of changing the rules as the game is played, but simply recognizing the wonderful, awe-inspiring creation process as divine.  Whether we conceive of the process of evolution as God or not, we have all at one time or another felt fascinated witnessing the innate abilities of the products of creation all around us.

“Picture, if you will, a mother bear in the dead of winter, asleep in her lair, under a layer of ice and snow.  Inside the warmth of her body, picture little bear twins waiting to be born.  Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry remind us in The Universe Story that inside the bear mother's womb, those cubs have paws that are ready for swimming salmon. Those paws have been shaped, sculpted, and caressed by millions of years of development, so that when that cub is born, he already has the feel of salmon at the end of his paws. Evolution has fashioned us across hundreds of millions of years, so that by the time we reach this world, the moment we come into this world, we already emerge social, curious, connected, delighted by joy.  We carry in our very bodies our cosmic and evolutionary history.”     Before those bear cubs have ever been in the world, they have everything they need for the journey.  So too have each of us inherited a fantastic array of faculties and abilities, and for these, I remain ever grateful to the process of evolution that planted me here.  

It is gratifying to appreciate human beings as a pinnacle of evolutionary development.  We come to have such a magnificent set of capabilities, and on top of that, each of us brings them together in unique ways.  There is no end to our novelty, and we create new things that have never been seen in the world before.  There is no telling which one of the 6 and a half billion people alive on Earth will be the one to discover the cure for AIDS or which of us will write the next great symphony.  Certainly the possibility of individual human achievement is one of the most admired products of evolution.  However, worshipping individual accomplishment runs contrary to the theory of evolution.  It would be counted a religious heresy, too. Evolution is not concerned with individuals but only with the resilience of entire species.

In Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity, author John Stewart, tells us that although competition may at times help an individual organism to survive, the root mechanism for evolutionary advancement in the larger sense always has been, and still is, cooperation.  BTW, this is not the Daily Show John Stewart, who evidently has a somewhat lower opinion of the evolutionary progress of at least some humans.  “Why cooperate? Because natural selection is a primary driver of evolution, and those who cooperate, whether they be molecules, cells, organisms, or societies, will out-last those who do not.”    Social anthropologists conclude Homo sapiens survived while Neanderthals did not because we were able to live together better in larger groups.  There is also evidence that our big brains grew specifically to facilitate the relational and social skills needed to work in partnership with people not in our immediate family or clan.

I’ll give you an example.  In an extended family or an even larger group of maybe up to 100 people, every member can instantly recognize everyone else.  Living together in family groups, we can see when little sister feeds the cat or daddy takes out the garbage.  We cooperate, understanding that each member does her or his part, contributing to the whole, and that makes life easier on each of us.  But when the group gets larger, we can’t personally witness the contributions to the clan of each and every other member.  And if the group gets too large, we won’t even recognize all the others.  In order for larger groups of people to trust each other enough to cooperate there must be a management system, a political system if you will.  The key is organizing so that individuals pursuing their own self interests also pursue the interests of the group; and making them realize that by serving the group, they are serving themselves.  One of the first parts of the system must be, what I’ll call for the lack of a better term, “a hard to fake symbol of membership.”  If I don’t know you, and I didn’t see you doing something to specifically help me out, how can I trust you?  If my job is guarding the entrance, should I let you in?  If you and I have the same tattoo or you can give the secret password, I’ll know you are on my side, and automatically give you the benefit of the doubt.  Thus when we see symbols, in whatever form, in widespread use throughout a group of people, we know they were a political community.

Stewart believes there is a direction to evolution, and it is toward ever more complex and cooperative systems.  He says, “Evolution on Earth to date has organized molecular processes into small-scale prokaryote cells, small cells into larger-scale cells, cells into multi-cellular organisms, and organisms into societies.  It is about to produce a unified cooperative organization of living processes on the scale of the planet, managed by humans.”   I know this is quite a leap of faith in evolution, and you’ll probably have read his book before you can share his optimism for humanity’s future, but I heartily agree with him about the direction we need to be heading.  It makes sense to me that since people have the capacity to create and manage complex political systems, and the future of the world depends upon our doing that well enough to prevent any number of calamities from bringing a pre-mature end to it all, that we should take up the responsibility for making life on earth more healthy and civilized for those will come after us.  It’s this simple: Humanity’s evolutionary purpose is to help us all live together in harmony.  Evolution's Arrow is pointing toward greater community.

Where are we going?  How will it all end?  The end of time is one of the great theological questions, and the theories about it are called eschatology.  Will we go out with a whimper or with a bang in an apocalypse?  It’s a big, important question, and so far, how, or when or if our world will end remains unclear.  People have always wondered about it and have been uncomfortable living with uncertainty about humanity’s ultimate destiny.  We really want to know what’s going to happen to us in the end.  That’s why there are so many fortune tellers, soothsayers and economists.  But nobody really knows the end, and predicting humanity’s future can’t even be called a science, yet.  It’s a mystery.
Any religion that tells you how the world will end is wrong.  People have long turned to religion for help with thinking about the end of human time or simply the end of their own lives.  When people bring questions about what the end will be like and what will happen then to pastors, or nurses or hospice workers, we want to give them answers that will calm their fears, to help them live with less anxiety and sadness.  It is so tempting to say we know – that everything will turn out all right, or that everything that happens is OK because the world turns in accordance with a plan that’s already been worked out by some divine, intelligent planner.  But I don’t know that the world’s future has been determined, and even if I thought it had been, I don’t have access to the plan, so I can’t tell people that I know anything about a divine plan.  I would love to give them confidence in the goodness of the future, but, I just can’t predict it.

But still, here we stand facing an uncertain future of global climate change, economic hardship, the prospect of being perpetually at war, and not enough resources or will power to end the suffering of the world’s poor and those hit by earthquakes and hurricanes.  If liberal religion can’t tell us that everything will turn out all right, what does it offer us to help us go into a frightening and uncertain future?  How can the ambiguous theology of Unitarian Universalism compete with the assurances of salvation from the ravages of this earth and a heavenly afterlife promised by other religions?  How do we deal with mystery?

We can’t offer certainty about the future; we can only assist each other as we walk into it.  When we lose someone or something important to us, when our spirits feel broken, when we need to rebuild in ourselves a sense of wholeness, we need other people to remind us that they are here with us, and that we can go forward together.  We don’t build a life as lonely individuals but in kinship with other, loving people.

What we offer is not a promise for our own individual salvation but belief in the possibility of a wholesome future for our children and their children if we work together to create it.  Our salvation lies not in the Creator’s hands but in using our human capacities, to hope for a better future, to choose healthier alternatives, to build better mousetraps, to live together in greater harmony, and to create beauty in our world.  That’s how we deal with uncertainty, we maintain hope as we work together to bind up the broken, to bend the arc toward justice, and to build a land where peace rolls down like an ever-flowing stream.  When we do these things, our lives mean something.  We create meaning by how we live our lives, and how we live our lives is what we leave our children.  The evolution of the human community is up to us, and working together we are capable of making a glorious, delightful future.