*Darwin Day 2009 - The Meaning of Evolution *

    Presented by Gary Sjogren on Feb. 15, 2009

    at The Unitarian Universalist Church in Anaheim

Reading: Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980 - "For we are the local embodiment of
a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our
origins: star stuff pondering the stars: organized assemblages of ten
billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms;
tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose..."

Feb. 12, 2009 was the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. This week,
almost 1000 churches (most not UU) are celebrating his life and work. A
year ago we heard from Michael Dowd about his book, "Thank God for
Evolution!" and I spoke last fall about the history and patterns of life
evolving on earth. Today I want to discuss the meaning of evolution -
both to myself personally, and its impacts on society.

CHARLES DARWIN
Darwin did not start out to turn our ideas about life upside down; he
once considered becoming a minister. His research voyage around the
world on the HMS Beagle in 1831 lasted almost 5 years, and it provided
much food for thought. He has been called the ship's "naturalist", but
one source said he was along for the ride as a companion for the
captain. He was especially intrigued by the variety of birds on the
Galapagos Islands, 600 miles off Ecuador. But fossils and similar living
animals on the South American mainland had as much to do with his ideas.
Darwin brought home thousands of fossil and recent animal specimens, and
had many of these examined by experts.

Darwin had a wide-ranging knowledge of animal breeding, fossils, and the
geographic distribution of living things. He was also influenced by "On
Population" by Malthus, who said that the earth would be overrun if most
progeny did not die ("Struggle for Existence"). Others before him
thought that life forms changed over time. The philosopher Herbert
Spencer used the phrase, "Survival of the fittest," in 1852. But
Darwin's 1959 book "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection"
explained how evolution happens. It took him twenty years of
consideration to write the "Origin..." and then only after fellow
naturalist Alfred Wallace sent him a similar idea. Some think that he
waited to publish because he was concerned over its impact. He wrestled
with the meaning of evolution, reportedly saying "I feel almost like
I've confessed to a murder."

Darwin's mature religious ideas are expressed in this quote: "The
impossibility of conceiving that this wondrous universe, with our
conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument
for the existence of God but whether this is an argument of real value,
I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if we admit a first
cause, the mind still craves to know whence it came, and how it arose.
Nor can I overlook the (theological) difficulty (posed by) the immense
amount of suffering through the world...." Darwin had a loss of faith
after of the death of his beloved daughter, Annie. He became a deist and
then an agnostic in later life. He was a Unitarian, having learned from
his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, that "Unitarianism is a featherbed to
catch a falling Christian." Many of faith also admit evolution, but
without evolution, one would need some creator or deity.

MY RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Like Darwin, I was effected by a death - that of my mother when I was
13. I was raised in a Jehovah's Witness family who believed the Genesis
creation story. But I was technically minded, read science books, and
gradually doubted creationism. I read Darwin's "Origin of Species" with
its many arguments for evolution. I decided the Witnesses were wrong
about evolution, and I also became skeptical of a religion which held
that it had the ONLY Truth. So I left them and have been an atheist ever
since. I've continued an interest in science and have worked with
geologists and paleontologists who use fossils to find the ages of rocks
and how they were deposited.

Now for a little show-and-tell: This wonderful poster spoke to me on a
vacation trip through San Francisco in 1967. It not only has an
intricate design and the psychedelic colors of that era, but it depicts
a huge variety of plants and animals, like a tree of life, starting from
chemical bases and a DNA spiral in the center. I just HAD to buy it!

EVOLUTION
Quoting The National Center for Science Education: "In the biological
sciences, evolution is a scientific theory that explains the emergence
of new varieties of living things in the past and in the present; it is
not a "theory of origins" about how life began. Evolution accounts for
the striking patterns of similarities and differences among living
things over time and across habitats through the action of biological
processes such as natural selection ... Evolution has been subjected to
scientific testing for over a century and has been (and continues to be)
consistently confirmed by evidence from a wide range of fields."

A study, "Evolutionary Biology and the National Research Agenda," said
in 1998: "Biological evolution consists of change in the hereditary
characteristics of groups of organisms over the course of generations.
... descent with modification of different lineages from common
ancestors ... [and] the ongoing adaptation of organisms to environmental
challenges and changes... [It] occupies a central position in the
biological sciences..."

Quoting Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in his 1995 book, "Darwin's
Dangerous Idea": "If I were to give an award for the single best idea
anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein
and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural
selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm
of ... mechanism and physical law."

Understanding Evolution is IMPORTANT to our survival. OLIVIA JUDSON
writes a blog, "The Wild Side," in the New York Times. (An evolutionary
biologist at Imperial College in London, she is taking six months off to
write a book, but you can read her old columns on the NYTimes web site.)
In "Optimism in Evolution" (August 12, 2008) she said:
- it provides a powerful framework for investigating the world we live in.
- the subject is immediately relevant - The impact we are having on the
planet causing other organisms to evolve; resistance to pesticides among
insects; the evolution of drug resistance in the agents of disease.
- a contempt for scientific evidence ... permeated Bush's policies. A
society where ideology is a substitute for evidence can go badly awry.

Quoting again from "Evolutionary Biology and the National Research
Agenda" on "Accomplishments in the Study of Evolution ... evolutionary
biologists have established that all organisms have evolved from a
common ancestor over more than 3.5 billion years of earth's history,
[and include] many aspects of human evolution. The methods, concepts,
and perspectives of evolutionary biology have contributed to other
biological disciplines, such as molecular and developmental biology,
physiology, and ecology, as well as to other basic sciences such as
psychology, anthropology, and computer science (Genetic algorithms).
Evolutionary methods help to trace the origins and epidemiology of
infectious diseases, and to analyze the evolution of antibiotic
resistance..."
Let me repeat, Evolution is IMPORTANT.

Darwin suggested land bridges (between Africa & South America) from his
knowledge of the geographic location of life forms. He did not know
about continental drift indicating that these two continents split 100
million years ago. He knew nothing about genes or Mendel's laws of
inheritance (he apparently did not open a letter from Mendel). He wrote
The Descent of Man in 1871, followed by a book on the display of
emotions in man and animals the next year. His last paper was in 1882, a
few weeks before his death. It described a tiny clam on the leg of a
beetle, which was sent to him by a mister Crick. As it happens, this was
the grandfather of Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of
DNA.

Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky's article in The American Biology
Teacher, March 1973, was entitled, "Nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution." He said, "It is remarkable that more
than a century ago Darwin was able to discern so much about evolution
without having available to him the key facts discovered since. The
development of genetics after 1900 especially of molecular genetics ...
has provided information essential to the understanding of evolutionary
mechanisms."

EVOLUTION VS. CREATIONISM
One of our Unitarian-Universalist principles is the free and responsible
search for truth and meaning. I will state that "Science" is NOT a
faith, but a process to gain knowledge about nature (using observations,
hypotheses, experiments, predictions, and publishing results so others
can verify them). Using the methods of science, our knowledge evolves.
But science has battled orthodoxy since Galileo and the Scopes trial in
1925 (over a law against teaching evolution in schools.) Past
philosophers (Cicero, Decartes, Voltaire) have argued that living things
were designed. William Paley (Natural Theology, 1802) used the
"watchmaker analogy" - finding a watch in a field implies a designer or
"creator." He claimed that this proved the existence of a God. Richard
Dawkins wrote "The Blind Watchmaker" to demolish that argument. Natural
selection explains the apparent "design" in biology.

But a 2006 Gallup poll showed that almost half of Americans believe that
humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form
within the last 10,000 years. More recently, "1 in 3 Americans
Unfamiliar with Darwin's Tie to Evolution" (By Katherine T. Phan,
Christian Post - Feb. 11, 2009)
... a Gallup poll conducted over the weekend asked Americans for what
scientific theory Charles Darwin was known.
... 55 percent of respondents correctly associated Darwin with the
theory of evolution, theory of natural selection or his fundamental work
Origin of Species.... perhaps dismaying to scientists ... less than 40%
of Americans today say they believe in the theory of evolution."

Creationism and "Intelligent Design" (called "ID") are faiths based on
ignorance. Advocates of "intelligent design" contend that some
biological structures are so complex they could not have appeared merely
through natural processes. What probably disturbs them most is that
mutations are random and natural selection is "blind." So there is no
goal or progress in evolution.

Darwin himself was probably one of his best critics - he included many
objections to his theory in the "Origin." Of the ID-style argument he
said: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge:
it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so
positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by
science."

"ID" is the cultivation of ignorance! (I prefer the abbreviation:
"IDiocy".) In 2001 (Reuters) "A committee of the Arkansas legislature
recommended banning ... the topic of evolution or related radio-carbon
dating of animal and plant fossils from state-funded textbooks used in
schools, museums, libraries and zoos."

A judge in Dover, Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that the teaching of
intelligent design violated the U.S. Constitution, which requires a
separation of church and state, because it is based on religious
conviction, not science. Federal District Judge John Jones [ruled that]
... "The overwhelming evidence is that intelligent design is a religious
view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory."
... the school board "consciously chose to change Dover's biology
curriculum to advance religion."

The International Society for Science & Religion stated, "We believe
that intelligent design is neither sound science nor good theology."

Reuters (Jan 4, 2008) reported that, "The National Academy of Sciences
issued a spirited defense of evolution as the bedrock principle of
modern biology, arguing that it ... must be taught in public school
science classes. ... Creationism, based on the explanation offered in
the Bible, and the related idea of "intelligent design" are not science..."

Yet in June 21, 2008 ... the Louisiana State Legislature overwhelmingly
approved a bill that seeks to undercut the teaching of evolution in the
public schools. And in Jan., 2009 the Texas State School Board
considered interjecting more discussion of creationism into school
textbooks using the cryptic phrase "strengths and weaknesses." They
narrowly decided not to, but did insert "sufficiency" discussions.

Theodosius Dobzhansky: "Let me try to make crystal clear ... Evolution
as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be
doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant
to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry... There are
no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical
examination."

Chemical similarities between thousands of creatures support our
knowledge of life's relationships. The genetic code is almost universal
in all life, with the exception of a few variants among simple viruses.
Hardly a week passes without another genome being sequenced; 98% of our
DNA is in common with chimpanzees; 50% of our enzymes are similar to
those in yeast! Chlorophyll in plants, hemoglobin in our red blood
cells, myoglobin in our muscles and our bile salts all contain a similar
ring-shaped molecule called heme. Chloroplasts in green plants and
mitochondria in animal cells still reflect their ancient sources. They
have their own DNA and propagate by dividing like simple organisms,
living today symbiotically within the cells that contain them. Our
mitochondrial DNA is closely related to the bacterium (Rickettsia
prowazekii) causing the disease Typhus.

The picture which has been consistently emerging is of a single tree of
life, demonstrating descent with variation, just as Darwin predicted.
The evidence from geology, comparative anatomy and fossils is consistent
with this view as well. One of the most important social meanings of
evolution is to support another UU principle, "respect for the
inter-dependant web of life". Humans are 99.8 % similar, so there is no
scientific basis for racism.

There have been misuses of evolution, by both the left and right.
Spencer's "survival of the fittest" was used to justify Social
Darwinism, capitalism and competition, the Eugenics movement, and
ultimately Hitler's goal of the "Master Race." But Darwin was no racist
- in fact, a recent book ("How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views
on Human Evolution," Adrian Desmond and James Moore) says that one of
the reasons Darwin argued for common ancestry was to campaign against
racism and slavery!

THE JOY OF UNDERSTANDING
In addition to the UU principle of a free and responsible search for
truth and meaning, I want to mention this aspect of wonder.

"Why I'm Happy I Evolved" By OLIVIA JUDSON, Jan. 1, 2006: "I ... revel
in being part of the immensity of nature and a product of evolution, the
same process that gave rise to dinosaurs, bread molds and myriad
organisms too wacky to invent... Some people want to think of humans as
the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I
am not among them; ... For me, the knowledge that we evolved is a source
of solace and hope. I find it a relief that plagues and cancers and wasp
larvae that eat caterpillars alive are the result of the impartial - and
comprehensible - forces of evolution rather than the caprices of a deity."

Olivia Judson, from her Aug. 12, 2008 column: "But for me, the most
important thing about studying evolution is ... that when we encounter
something in nature that is complicated or mysterious ... we don't have
to shrug our shoulders in bewilderment. Instead, we can ask how it got
to be that way. And if at first it seems so complicated that the
evolutionary steps are hard to work out, we have an invitation to
imagine, to play, to experiment and explore. To my mind, this only
enhances the wonder."

Physicist Richard Feynman (in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out") told
about an artist friend who thought he had a more aesthetic sense. "Look
at this flower, how beautiful it is, but you as a scientist would
analyze it and reduce it to a drab thing." Richard found that idea "kind
of nutty." He said he saw and enjoyed the color as much as anyone, but
he also could appreciate it on other levels - the cell structure and
biochemistry and history of flowers. That they and animals had
co-evolved to benefit each other for pollen and seed dispersal and food.
And that insect's and our sense of beauty had evolved along with color
vision. So he thought that his understanding only added to his sense of
the beauty of the flower.

I myself have thought a number of times about the details of our bodies
- our eyelashes which keep out dust and gnats or our fingernails and the
ridges of our fingerprints, that allow us to grip things better and
maybe not fall off a cliff. And I've wondered how many millions of our
early ancestors' cousins died because they did not have those things
quite as developed. Darwin said "there is a grandeur in this view of
life." I invite you to realize the long history of life on earth, and
that all life forms are distant cousins. This way of looking at things
is enlightening.

I'll close by quoting biologist Julian Huxley - "man can now see himself
as the sole agent of further evolutionary advance on this planet... He
finds himself in the unexpected position of business manager for the
cosmic process of evolution. He no longer ought to feel separated from
nature; he is part of it..."