Unitarian Universalists For Intelligent Design?
The Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
February 10, 2008
Northern Hills Fellowship

Reading

The reading was an excerpt of, Separation of Church and Zoo, delivered by Rev. Marlin Lavanhar at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, August 14th, 2005. His sermon can be found at:
http://www.allsoulschurch.org/sermons.asp?sermon=124&action=menu&value=136&pagecode=92

Sermon

Teaching Evolution is under attack. Recently in Utah where I lived for two years there were two bills in the legislature whose intent was to call the theory of Evolution into question. Here is an excerpt from Senator Buttars’ bill which: “…requires the State Board of Education to establish curriculum requirements and policies that stress that not all scientists agree on which theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race, is correct; and do not endorse a particular theory regarding the origins of life or the origins or present state of the human race…” Buttars has stated he wants Utah public schools to teach “Divine Design,” alongside the scientific theory of evolution.

A similar bill sponsored in the Utah House by Representative Ferrin says, “…In order to encourage students to critically analyze scientific instruction regarding the origins of life and the origins of species, to consider differing scientific viewpoints, and to form their own opinions, the Legislature desires to avoid the perception that any scientific theory, hypothesis, or instruction regarding the origins of life, or the origins of species has been indisputably proven, or that the state endorses any one theory or hypothesis…” Based on legislation like this, other state school boards have inserted statements in school science textbooks stating Evolution is only a theory, giving students a clear signal they can disbelieve it if they want to.
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Being relatively new in Ohio, I don’t understand the politics here around teaching evolution in the schools very well, yet. The state whose evolution politics I knew most about was Tennessee. I lived in Chattanooga for 18 years. Chattanooga is only 30 miles from Dayton, Tennessee, where the infamous Scopes monkey trial was held in 1925. Every year the [William Jennings] Bryan College in Dayton sponsors a festival featuring a reenactment of the Scopes trial. The play is staged in the original courtroom which is almost identical to the way it looked 80 years ago. Members of the audience sitting in the courtroom gallery are encouraged to take sides and shout at the lawyers, just as the people did during the trial. When I attended the play in 1995, I was incredulous that the majority of the people in the audience were anti-evolution. At the time I wondered if the people had been put up to this by the festival organizers. But I could tell many were not acting. Maybe the loyal citizens of Dayton were doing this as a way of showing their resentment at being characterized as uneducated Southerners. I couldn’t believe that intelligent people would be against the theory of evolution. It seemed to me that if they were against evolution they were against science, the very basis of the technological society that they otherwise seemed to enjoy. I was a member of the UU church in Chattanooga where people placed scientific theory right up there next to theology – probably even above it. At the time, I’m afraid I stereotyped the anti-evolutionists as backwards people and wrote them off, assuming they would eventually come into agreement with us more enlightened folks, or at least they might remain isolated in rural areas where they would have little impact on the rest of the country.

Then in 1999 came the Kansas Board of Education ruling that school children would be taught evolution was a only a theory, and that opened the door for so-called ‘Creation Science’ to be taught in classrooms. 2005 saw the Tulsa Zoo episode, and in 2006 there was an important court case about Evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, and in May 2007 the Creation Museum opened right in our back yard. These skirmishes in what has been called the “Culture Wars” seem to be never-ending. Over the years, after losing several court battles, some Creation Scientists have revised their stance and now support a theory called Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design theory dropped some of the less defensible claims of Creation Science. Unlike Creation Scientists, Intelligent Design advocates accept evolution. Intelligent Design can be defined as the belief that an intelligent agent initiated creation and continues to influence the natural world. It’s main argument is that intelligence must have been involved in evolution because nature is so complex. They say uncontrolled processes such as natural selection cannot adequately explain the origin and development of living organisms, especially humans. In order for creatures as complex as humans to evolve, a supernatural and intelligent creator must have intervened at critical junctures in the natural process.

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People who take the other side of the debate, we’ll call them believers in scientific Evolution, would like to keep proponents of Intelligent Design, we’ll call them believers in religious Evolution, out of the schools. Scientific Evolution people say Intelligent Design theory is not good science. They say that science must properly be limited to investigations of the natural world, and explanations of how the world works must be limited to natural causes. This philosophy of science is called naturalism or materialism. Materialism says knowledge of matter and energy and their interactions are all that is necessary to understand the natural world. This philosophy requires neutrality towards God; a naturalist cannot say, wearing her scientist hat, whether God does or does not act. Therefore, say believers in scientific Evolution, Intelligent Design should be excluded from science curricula. They see Intelligent Design as religion and not science. Furthermore, they claim including Intelligent Design in public school classrooms is a violation of the Constitutional requirement to keep church and state separate.
Even though there have been several court cases, and innumerable discussions on Evolution, this issue is nowhere near resolution. The two sides can’t even agree on what science is. And so, the battle goes on an on. When I see this happening in an argument between two people, I know what is going on. When the two sides are talking past each other - they aren’t even on the same playing field. They haven’t agreed on the basis for the argument. They’ll never resolve their dispute unless they can frame it in such a way that both are talking about the same thing. This is what is going on in the battle over Evolution. The underlying issue is not education or even science; it is religion. The battles over teaching Evolution can best be understood as a culture war about religion. Since the problem is a religious, not a scientific one, as long as we focus on Evolution, we are looking at it backwards. Until we acknowledge the religious concerns of both sides, the battle will continue.
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There has not always been a war between science and religion. During the early period of the Enlightenment, theology was called the “Queen of the Sciences.” However, that began to change by the mid 18th century. When explorations of Biblical lands failed to find physical evidence of the miracle stories, rationalists began to question the miracles’ validity. Then European scholars used structural analysis techniques on biblical texts to determine their authors and to try to resolve apparent contradictions between the various books of the Bible. From these studies came more doubts about the literal truth of the Bible. One of the first Americans to learn of this scholarship was Theodore Parker, a Unitarian Minister. He was quick to recognize the huge challenge to Christianity these ideas would present.
To respond to these challenges, to help Christianity remain strong in the face of them, he delivered a sermon at an ordination in 1841 entitled, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity. Historian Conrad Wright considers that sermon one of “three classic utterances of American Unitarianism.” He places it in the Unitarian canon along with Channing’s Unitarian Christianity sermon, and Emerson’s Divinity School Address. After Emerson and Parker, Unitarians no longer clung to Jesus’ miracles as the validation that his words were true. Wright says, “Emerson and Parker alike insisted that the religious impulse is primary and universal and that Christianity is but one of many expressions of that primary impulse, deriving its authority from its congruity with universal truths.”

Parker’s Transient and Permanent sermon recognizes that some would resist any change whatsoever to existing church practice or beliefs. For those who assumed everything in Christianity must mesh together, if any piece was removed the whole house of cards would fall down. He says, “there are some, who are affrighted by the faintest rustle which a heretic makes among the dry leaves of theology; they tremble lest Christianity itself should perish without hope.” To counter this fundamentalist impulse, Parker pointed out that while some things in Christianity might be Transient and fade away, such as the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible, the Permanent truths of Christianity would stay. The primary ones of these he said were the love of man and the love of God. In good Unitarian fashion, he described a rational way to maintain spirituality in the face of philosophical challenges to the orthodox religion of the day. UUs today may not see his proposal as controversial, but he was roundly attacked by conservatives in Boston and all but a few Unitarian Clergy virtually abandoned him. Parker’s attempt to save Christianity from what he knew would be great challenges to it were seen as heretical attacks on the Bible. The war between science and religion had begun, and Parker was not able to mediate a truce.
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Then came Darwin. Publication of is book, The Origin of Species, in 1859 took the debates between science and religion to a higher level. Darwin’s biography relates that he held up publication for several years because he sensed the religious controversy it might engender. To many orthodox Christians of the day, who already felt under fire, Darwin’s explanations for natural phenomenon seemed an even greater challenge to the Bible than the failure to find anthropological proof for biblical miracle stories. Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s contemporary, was an ardent advocate of the then heretical views expounded in The Origin of Species. Huxley outraged audiences in the 1860s claiming humans evolved from apes. He militantly confronted Anglicans with what was called the ‘Devil's Gospel.’ In the latter quarter of the 19th century, Herbert Spencer, coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” and promoted a pop philosophy version of evolutionism called ‘Social Darwinism,’ which put English-speaking Europeans at the top of the evolutionary ladder.

In the early twentieth century much as in our own time religion and science engaged in sometimes bitter dialogue. As they struggled to adapt to dramatic changes brought by immigration and urbanization, many liberals, including some Unitarians and Universalists embraced "Social Darwinism". This so-called science suggested ways to engineer problems out of society by creating a stronger human species. One major thrust of Social Darwinism was the discredited "Science" called Eugenics in which physically and mentally impaired people were sterilized by force in order to eliminate them from the gene pool. “The high school biology textbook at issue in the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial included, along with a brief mention of evolution, a call for improving human stock through selective breeding. Fundamentalists, already horrified by evolution’s challenge to the [biblical] creation story, concluded that it also led to dangerous schemes for reshaping humankind.” And their fear was to prove justified when Eugenics was used as one of the arguments for the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis. Early 20th century liberals’ support for Social Darwinism gave rise to the still oft repeated charge that liberals care more for abstract principles than they do for real people.

By the mid 20th century, it was generally assumed science and secularism would rule in the public sphere. The Boomer generation was taught Evolution as matter of factly as Newtonian physics, as if it had no religious implications. Liberals, who favored keeping religion out of the public schools were happy to support science as one of our highest public goals. But in the last quarter of the 20th century, conservative Christians made it clear they refused to accept a social order which leaves out religion. One the many ways the now powerful Christian Right has asserted their point of view is though the Evolution debate. They claim scientists unfairly exclude the possibility of Intelligent Design. Essentially, they say liberals are requiring school children to be taught atheism.

Rabbi Michael Lerner says, “When liberals respond to the ideological claims of the [Christian] Right with an unflappable faith in science as the only way to understand the world, they actually strengthen the claims of their opponents. To the extent liberals say the only things worth knowing are taught by science, they confirm the suspicions of many Americans that liberals are totally out of touch with the spiritual dimension of life, the very dimension that most people believe to be the most important aspect of their experience.” They think we don’t have a spiritual clue.
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Unitarian Universalists have always been rationalists and have looked for ways to maintain spirituality in the face of challenges from orthodox religion. We should understand how it feels to have one’s religious views suppressed. We need to reframe the argument such that we are seen to be in support of freedom of religious belief – and that includes the Christian Right’s beliefs. We should not ridicule the Christian Right, even fundamentalists for their beliefs. The first part of reframing the debate is to show that we liberal religious people are not inherently against God. That’s been a really tough one for me, but it can be done.

Second, there need to be open discussions in our high schools around definitions of science and the philosophy of science. The prevalent philosophy of science has a self admitted bias. It excludes the possibility of supernatural causation – of anything. It doesn’t say there is or isn’t an intelligent designer or god involved in creation; it simply says it can take no position on God. What if there is or ever was an intelligent designer? This philosophy of science would not allow us to recognize it. Is that good science? Maybe the prevailing philosophy of science needs a revision. This doesn’t mean we should give in to the Christian Right’s attempts to re-introduce the biblical creation story as a scientific alternative to Evolution. Creation Science is far from good science. An open discussion of the philosophy of science should be able to differentiate a religious myth versus a naturalistic story of creation.

Third, and maybe most controversial for UUs who have long supported the separation of church and state, is my suggestion that philosophy of religion be taught in our public schools. Students should learn what it is people are trying to know and experience through religion, and they should be able to compare the approaches of different religions. They should discuss how religious beliefs relate to scientific conclusions. I know of several good UU Religious Education curricula they could use. UUs know how teaching comparative religious philosophy to our children helps them live in our multi-cultural and multi-faith society.

Fundamentalists won’t like this – they want the exclusive claims of their faith taught. But, most Christians will appreciate knowing that God and religion are not excluded from public discourse even at school. I believe the vast majority of Americans want our social contract to truly support freedom of religion. Over time, moderate Christians will see no need to teach Creationism as an “alternative science.” The Christian Right will no longer be able to use it as a wedge issue.

Our national experiments with Prohibition haven’t worked – not for alcohol, not for drugs, and not for religion. The Christian Right has forced an end to religious prohibition in schools and in government. They call for the integration of spirituality in everyday life. I agree with that goal. But, are we going to stand by until we end up with government support for one religious point of view to the exclusion of ours? It is our challenge to create social conditions that support religious tolerance and an end to the culture wars. It is time we learned to talk about our religious views in public. In the spirit of Theodore Parker, let us publicly proclaim what we know of liberal religious principles – that they have deep value for people and they are here to stay. It is time to find ways to teach religious tolerance in our schools.

Teaching tolerance can be a powerful wedge for the Spiritual Left. What will be the ground rules for the public discourse on religion? You can help decide – if you join the discussion.
Go – and make peace

Wright, Conrad. Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism: Channing, Emerson, Parker, 2nd Ed. Unitarian Universalist Association (Boston: 1986) 4.
Ibid. 113.
Shulevitz, Judith. “When Cosmologies Collide,” in The New York Times Book Review, (New York: January 22, 2006) 12.
Lerner, Michael. “Evolution and Science Under Attack,” Tikkun Vol. 21, No. 1 (Berkeley: Jan/Feb 2006) 6.