The Rev. Ann R. Lougee February 11, 2007 The "Intelligent Design" Question Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith by Philip Kitcher For the second year, this Sunday in February is being celebrated as Evolution Sunday by progressive churches across the country, as a result of what is called the Clergy Letter Project. Last year on this Sunday I spoke of the efforts of some people to have Creationism be considered a science, and of attempts to disguise and defend it as Intelligent Design, by invoking the Bible, in opposition to the work of Darwin. I mentioned that it often surprises me how many people don't seem to know that there are two very different stories in the Bible of how God created the world and all that is therein. I said that must pose problems for people who insist that everything in the Bible has to be taken as literal truth -- but maybe they just don't know the Bible very well. Besides that, I wondered, who do they think was around, watching and taking notes, when all this happened, anyway? Nobody was created yet, right? And, I asked, how come people readily accept the idea that the flu virus undergoes mutations so that our vaccine needs to be changed constantly, but reject the idea of mutation as the basis of Darwin's theory of evolution? At that point, one member got up and left. This year, I want to approach the subject from a perhaps more sympathetic perspective, at least a more practical rather than theological perspective. I want to acknowledge what needs those literalistic beliefs satisfy, and to suggest another approach to satisfying those needs. It is easy to think that the dominance of progressive perspectives within universities, and in other places where highly educated people are found, should be explained in terms of clear-headedness and tough-mindedness. We could say that these are people who can appreciate the force of logical arguments, and who will not allow reason to be clouded by illogical appeals to their emotions. I doubt, however, that this completely accounts for their readiness to embrace modern progressiveness. For academics and scientists, as well as other professionals, can more easily sustain a sense of their lives as amounting to something, even in the absence of traditional attitudes toward God. Their lives are centered on work that is frequently significant and challenging, exciting and rewarding. Typically, they belong to communities in which serious issues can be openly discussed, and in which there are readily available opportunities for the sharing of troubles and concerns. There are others, however, who are buffeted by the vicissitudes of the economy, who are victimized by injustice, who are scorned and vilified by successful members of their societies. There are those whose work is tedious and unrewarding, and for whom material rewards are scanty or for whom the toys of consumer culture hold no allure. There are people for whom there is no place to unburden themselves and release their pent-up emotions except in religious settings. There are people who find only in their church a supportive community in which they can hope that their lives mean something, that their lives matter. Unfortunately, the forms of Christianity that have been most successful in recruiting such people place heavy emphasis on the full acceptance of dogma and on literal interpretations of the canonical texts. Despite the demolition of these doctrines that Darwin and his allies ought to have wrought, scriptural myths rule over many American lives. This is because many churches have found no replacements for the traditional ways of supporting the emotions and reflections essential to meaningful human existence. For people seeking comfort and meaning in those kinds of churches, the onslaught of modernity threatens to demolish almost everything. After all, to resist Darwin is hardly unreasonable if what you would be left with is a drab, painful, and impoverished life. Perhaps that is why the voices of reason are (to them) as sounding brass or clanging cymbals, and why some of them cling to thinking that was given up by modern thinkers five centuries ago in the Renaissance and again three centuries ago in the Enlightenment. The 18th Century Enlightenment in Europe, especially England and France, and also in the United States, popularized the Renaissance philosophy that true scientific knowledge depends on evidence and on intellectually consistent reasoning. The logical conclusion of this way of thinking is that arbitrary authority is the enemy of knowledge. Enlightenment thinking leads to the conclusion that authorities have no right to impose on us any dogmas which rest on cultural habit rather than absolute truth. Powerfully influenced by the discovery of thriving non-Christian societies in far-off places, Enlightenment thinkers argued that morals are culturally relative. They asked, for example, what gives Europeans the right to insist that Brazilian cannibals who merely consume dead human flesh instead of wasting it are morally inferior to Europeans who persecute and oppress others of whom they disapprove? This way of thinking leads to the idea that if we cannot be certain that our values are God-given, then we have no right to impose them by force on others. Inquisitors, popes, and kings alike thus had no business enforcing adherence to particular religious or philosophical beliefs. It was becoming clear that there was nothing inevitable or even superior about European patterns of thought and living: there were many possible ways of being human, and doubtless new ones could be invented. Enlightenment thinkers used the examples of other cultures to gain the freedom to reshape not only their philosophies, but their societies. In the United States, in the 20th century, specifically the 1920's, aware that the Enlightenment had created a "crisis in religion," America's premier philosopher, John Dewey, wrote of a need for a new attitude to religion and religious people. He suggested that we need outlets for the emotions that underlie religion. He argued that this requires the emancipation of the religious life from the encumbrance of the old dogmas of the churches and of their commitment to the literal truth of their favored scriptural stories. The task, Dewey wrote, is to cultivate those attitudes that "lend deep and enduring support to the processes of living." He was pointing to a position, I believe, on which spiritual religion and progressive modernism can converge. To accomplish this, religion can erect barriers against sliding back into supernaturalism. Religion can and must embrace a cosmopolitan conception of the contribution of many different traditions to our understanding of the deepest questions about ourselves and our ideals. For its part, progressivism can learn to appreciate the genuine needs that stand behind religion. At the start of the 21st century, however, we haven't achieved the broadening of the religious life that Dewey envisaged. Religious philosophy, in the English-speaking world especially, has found little time for larger questions about the meaning and value of human lives. Furthermore, the theologies of many religions are complex and not widely or popularly understood. Therefore, unfortunately, the most obvious places in which many people seek answers to the question of what their lives mean and why they matter are places dominated by supernaturalist religion and outmoded doctrine. There is, of course, another category of people who have simply left any expression of organized religion. they don't know there are churches like this one that encourages us to have a rational outlook and also a deep spiritual life and faith. These are the people that retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has labeled the "church alumni society." Not realizing that religion and science do not have to be mutually exclusive, they think that in order to respect their intellects, they must reject faith, rather than reject science in order to cling to an unaccommodating faith, as the first category of people we considered does. That's why I believe Pilgrim church is so important in this community. We know that people in our culture are starved for spiritual experience, for a sense of meaning, for a sense of how they fit into the universe. We know that, in our technology-centered society, people hunger as well for genuine connections with others. We also know that progressive, thinking people like ourselves cannot be satisfied to park our brains outside of the sanctuary doors. As Marcus Borg has said, "My heart cannot worship what my mind cannot accept." So we need to let it be known that here, at this church, we respect science and knowledge, and we don't see them as contradicting a life of faith. We need also to continue to create systems of support, to develop and extend them to meet human needs, to enjoy being community together, and to offer people many and varied opportunities to confront directly what their lives might mean and why they matter. I believe that a sense of community in itself can bring reassurances about the value of each human life. People embedded in well-functioning communities can feel, deeply and securely, that their lives matter, without having to suspend rational, intellectual process and progressive inquiry. So may we in this church be a true community of caring for one another, as well as for the world beyond these walls. May we never fear to know whatever our God-given intelligence allows us to know, and may we always distrust restrictions on learning. May we trust science enough to liberate the classroom from theology, and may we also be faithful enough to liberate the Creator from science. Furthermore, may we always celebrate, both in worship together and in the silence of our individual hearts, the Mystery in and beyond science, in and beyond scripture, in and beyond us and all creation -- the ineffable One, the Giver of life and whatever lies beyond life—the God much greater than Intelligent Design. Amen