Organization: CMPSCI Dept, UMass Amherst Keywords: Cc: Hi! I've just finished the first draft of a sermon for our church's lay-led summer service on 14 July. If you're anywhere near Northampton MA at 10:00 that morning, I'd love to see you there. But for anyone else (especially anyone starved for UUism in a churchless summer) here is the order of meeting, the readings, and the sermon. I welcome any comments -- I still have some time to change things. Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence Summer Service, 14 July 1996 "Darwinism" David Mix Barrington **************************** [The order of meeting is meant to be similar to but slightly simpler than our regular order -- a committee came up with a template which individual presenters can play with.] Order of meeting for summer service, 14 July 1996 "I like the silent church before the service begins..." -- Emerson CALL TO SILENCE Chime/Bell PRELUDE from the "Pathetique Sonata" Ludwig van Beethoven Norma Brown, piano WELCOME LIGHTING THE CHALICE *HYMN "O God Our Help in Ages Past" #281 READINGS Paley, Dawkins, Wilder MOMENT OF REFLECTION SONG "Rejoice in the Lord Alway" Henry Purcell Court Canby and Singers SERMON "Darwinism" David Mix Barrington SONG "Linden Lea" arr. R. Vaughn Williams Court Canby and Singers READING Lewis Thomas MOMENT OF RELECTION *HYMN "We Are the Earth Upright and Proud" #303 POSTLUDE/OFFERTORY from "The Well-Tempered Clavier" J.S. Bach Norma Brown, piano MOMENT OF RELECTION CHIME/BELL ********************************** Readings for summer service 14 July 1996 1. The first reading is from _Natural Theology_ by the Reverend William Paley, written in 1802. The book begins with the famous "watchmaker argument", where Paley says that if he encountered a watch on the ground he could deduce the existance of a watchmaker. Having thus argued for the existance of God, he is now arguing for His benevolence: "It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water teem with delighted existance. In a spring moon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. `The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of newborn flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose testify their joy and the exaltation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties. [...] The whole-winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and, under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them. [Paley continues by describing aphids, running land animals, and the fry of fish, concluding...] These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves." 2. The second reading is from the opening pages of _The Selfish Gene_ by Richard Dawkins. "If we were told that a man had lived a long and prosperous life in the world of Chicago gangsters, we would be entitled to make some guesses as to the sort of man he was. We might expect that he would have qualities such as toughness, a quick trigger finger, and the ability to attract loyal friends. These would not be infallible deductions, but you can make some inferences about a man's character if you know something about the conditions in which he has survived and prospered. The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes. Like successful Chicago gangsters, our genes have survived, in some cases for millions of years, in a highly competitive world. This entitles us to expect certain qualities in our genes. I shall argue that a predominant quality to be expected in a gene is ruthless selfishness. This gene selfishness will usually give rise to selfishness in individual behaviour. However, as we shall see, there are special circumstances in which a gene can achieve its own selfish goals by fostering a limited form of altruism at the level of individual animals. `Special' and `limited' are important words in the last sentence. Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense." 3. The third reading is from Thornton Wilder's play _Our Town_. One of the characters, Mr. Webb the newspaper editor, is answering questions from the audience about his town of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire in the early 1900's. A "Belligerent Man" asks: "Is there no one in town aware of social justice and industrial inequality?" "Oh, yes, everybody is -- somethin' terrible. Seems like they spend most of their time talking about who's rich and who's poor." "Then why don't they do something about it?" [He withdraws without waiting for an answer.] "Well, I dunno... I guess we're all hunting like everybody else for a way the diligent and sensible can rise to the top and the lazy and quarrelsome can sink to the bottom... but it ain't easy to find. Meanwhile, we do all we can to help those that can't help themselves, and those that can we leave alone." (Reading 4 follows sermon.) ********************************** Sermon for summer service 14 July 1996 "Darwinism" David Mix Barrington I have a "Darwin fish" on my van. It's very much like the "Jesus fish" you'll often find on Christians' cars, except for two things -- the name "Darwin" is written inside the outline, and the fish has legs. You can get a "more advanced" fish from the same people, which has the world "evolve" in the middle and which has one leg holding a wrench. There are ads for these fish in our Unitarian Universalist national magazine, _The World_, and most but not all UU's seem to appreciate the joke. Darwin is generally a hero to us -- he even shows up on lists of famous Unitarians -- because he represents reason as opposed to superstition. One of the best ways to get UU's riled up is to tell them about another attempt to teach so-called "scientific creationism" in the schools. We know that Darwin was right, and those who take the Genesis story literally are wrong, because the whole weight of scientific evidence is on one side. Since we believe that reason and science, rather than religious dogma, should decide such questions, we are with Darwin. But to many religious liberals, Darwinism has a dark side called "Social Darwinism". It shows up most dramatically in the question of what a society should do for its poor. If the universe, as Darwin taught us, operates by the survival of the fittest, is it not "natural" for some _people_ to succeed (perhaps the "diligent and sensible") and others (perhaps the "lazy and quarrelsome") to fail? If in fact those who are failing are doing so because they are somehow less fit, is it right or practical for the rest of us to help them? Here most, but again not all, Unitarian Universalists would come down on the "anti-Darwinist" side. This is a crude caricature of the debate, I admit, but I think it gets at the heart of the apparent contradiction. I want to look at Darwinism this morning in two ways. First, what was the context from which Darwin's view of the world emerged? I'll share something of what I've learned from the excellent recent biography of Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. Secondly, if this view of the world is essentially correct (and I think myself that it is), how can I respond to it as a Unitarian Universalist? By an interesting coincidence, Charles Darwin was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln, the 12th of February 1809. The formative experience of his life was his round-the-world voyage on the Royal Navy survey ship _HMS Beagle_, from 1831 to 1836. As he made the natural observations that helped lead him to his theories, he also managed to miss five of the most interesting years in British social history -- a time in many ways not unlike our own. Let's take a brief look at the political and social cast of characters in 1830's Britain. We can identify three broad groups, each with its own religious, political, and social world view. We begin with the conservatives or "Tories", heavily identified with the established Anglican church. To attend Cambridge University, as Darwin did just before his trip, a man had to swear allegiance to the 39 articles of Anglican faith, and study among other things the works of the Reverend William Paley, an excerpt from which we heard earlier. Paley's world was a happy one in which everyone knew their place. The hereditary aristocracy ran things, the established church kept everyone on the moral straight and narrow, and the poor were supported by the state through the tax-supported church. God's plan for British society was manifest in the recent victory over Napoleon, and the job of a naturalist like Paley was to expose more of the details of God's similar plan for the natural world. Before the offer to go around the world, Darwin had a career much like this in mind. Next are the liberals or "Whigs", identified with various Dissenting churches including the British Unitarians (a movement distinct from but not that different from American Unitarians). They were just achieving the final victory in their struggle to change the political order of Britain, by passing the Reform Bill which shifted representation in Parliament from Tory "rotten boroughs" in the country to the newer Whig towns. The Whigs considered a self-made fortune, like that of Darwin's grandfather Josiah Wedgwood, to be as good as any inherited one. Society should be free to allow the energy of the people, particularly the most able people, to create progress. The poor should be given _opportunity to succeed_ rather than general support, through institutions like workhouses. (One can't help but notice the similiarities with today's welfare debate, except that the words "conservative" and "liberal" have swapped positions.) Religiously, Whigs tended to emphasize personal salvation more than did the more institutional Tories. The third group can be called the "Radicals", who argued for various fundamental changes in society. You might be surprised, as I was, that they included many "evolutionists" (following Lamarck, a Frenchman from the generation before) and other forms of atheists and/or materialists as well as socialists like the young Karl Marx. Some of their ideas, such as giving the vote to all adult men or even to women, were eventually adopted. Others, such as the idea that the poor should have some control over their own destiny, remain radical even today. Before his great voyage, Darwin was a social Tory and a religious Whig. (Though his grandfather Erasmus was a notorious "freethinker", meaning "atheist", Charles had a more-or-less Unitarian upbringing, though he acquired no positions strong enough to keep him from affirming the Anglican 39 articles on entering Cambridge.) Soon after his return he formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection, and thereby immediately became an intellectual Radical. He wrote up his ideas but circulated them only among close friends and colleagues, fearing that publishing would forever link him with the other Radicals, alienating his entire social acquaintance. He married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood at just this time. A devout Unitarian (but no Universalist), she was not bothered in her religious faith by Charles' ideas but worried greatly that they might keep _him_ from heaven. She tried through the early years of their marriage to bring him to her own loving, non-doctrinal Christianity, but the last hope of this ended when their beloved eldest daughter died at the age of ten. Convinced emotionally of God's non-benevolence and intellectually of His non-existence, he lived on to a long, prosperous, respected, but apparently quite unhappy old age, tormented by illness and personal loss. He was a virtual recluse on his estate, where he found solace in his naturalist's work (spending several years, for example, on a compendium of earthworms) and in his family, staying largely above politics both scientific and worldly. Feeling no further connection to the Christian church, and finding that another man named Wallace was coming to some of the same conclusions, Darwin published his theories in 1859 and set off something of an intellectual firestorm. The wealthy and respectable Darwin could not be ignored as easily as other Radicals, and more importantly he provided a mechanism for evolution which fitted perfectly into the Whig world-view. Before long the Whig establishment had adopted Darwinism, and Social Darwinism soon followed. By the time of his death in 1882, this atheist was respectable enough to be buried in Westminster Abbey next to Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. Modern Darwinism views the biological world as a capitalist marketplace of life and death. Paley's world of insects rejoicing in God's bounty is replaced by Dawkins' world of ruthless Chicago gangsters. If an individual creature does not pursue its own interests, it will be outcompeted by one that does and die without progeny. Actually, Dawkins argues, it's not quite as bad as that. What survives through the ages are not individuals or species but genes, so that it makes sense for an individual to selflessly help its children, or perhaps its relatives who carry the same genes. Genes survive if they manage to be carried within individuals that prosper. The parallels to capitalist economics are obvious. Just as small businesses seek out economic niches (is it possible to make money selling bird feeders in Northampton?), genes in effect seek out and compete for ecological niches (like those strange creatures who live off the gases vented by undersea volcanoes). After a time, we see only those who were successful in this struggle --- who were "most fit". To be more careful, though, we see those who were most fit for their particular environment. Environments change, and sheer luck is clearly a big factor in ecological as well as economic success. In the economic world, the environment is partially under the control of governments and philosophies. Wilder's Mr. Webb recognizes the limits of Social Darwinism --- the system of success and failure would be right if it were fair, but there is still a need to "help those who can't help themselves". But are Mr. Webb, and those of us who work like him for some sort of social justice, wasting our time and resources, and thus hurting our own genes' chances of survival? Are we bound to be outcompeted by others, Scrooges or Al Capones perhaps, who pursue only their own interests? Clearly many people believe in evolution in biology but still don't think so. And clearly many if not most people _do_ behave altruistically some of the time, so any genes that lead to such behavior can't have been wholly eliminated. One reason for this may be the _other_ kind of evolution that is going on. Just as organisms carry and propagate genes, thinking creatures carry and propagate _ideas_ --- beliefs, cultural behavior patterns --- Dawkins calls them "memes". Ideas can succeed by being carried by prospering individual minds, but also by "infecting" other minds. In the long run, the memes that survive will be those that succeed in this struggle, whether by leading to their hosts' success or by spreading to new hosts. The analogy to viruses, both the biological and the computer kind, is compelling and a little scary. The point is, though, that this memetic evolution can conceivably interfere with ordinary genetic evolution. Take a hypothetical gene which creates a brain which, under the influence of the right memes, leads to altruistic behavior. Whether this gene survives depends on its host's environment, which includes the prevailing memes. If the host is born into a society in which individuals cooperate with each other, the altruism gene might outcompete another which leads to anti-social behavior. And the cooperation might lead to hosts in this society outcompeting those in other societies. Where does this leave Unitarian Universalism? Well, we have six "memes" called the Principles of the UUA. I want to conclude by looking at each of these six and seeing what sense they make in a Darwinistic world. 1. "The inherent worth and dignity of every person." I wonder whether Paley's insects, happy as they were, had a concept of the inherent worth and dignity of every insect. The idea seems directly opposed to "survival of the fittest", until you remember about environments. A society which has the ability and the will to change the environment to recognize the apparently unfit might well benefit later from the talents of a Franklin Roosevelt or a Stephen Hawking. 2. "Justice, equality, and compassion in human relations." A society can only achieve the advantages of cooperation only if it makes sense for the individuals within it to cooperate --- this is one possible definition of "justice". A powerful meme to help justice is the idea that all members should be treated "equally". "Compassion" has obvious benefits to its recipients, but a society practicing compassion may also be one in which such justice, and hence cooperation, is more easily achieved. (B. F. Skinner called Jesus the world's greatest practical psychologist for his discovery that if you love thine enemy, _you_ feel better...) 3. "Accepting one another... fostering spiritual growth." A better understanding of the workings of the world did not help Darwin deal with the death of his young daughter. A better understanding of the _purpose_ of the world might have. One way to try to reach such an understanding is by a "free market" in religious memes -- respectful consideration of the widest possible variety of religious ideas. 4. "Rights of conscience... the democratic process." These are time-tested memes for the successful managing of cooperation among individual humans, on both a small and large scale. Though I'm reminded of Winston Churchill's characterization of democracy -- "The worst conceivable system of government... except for all the others." 5. "A world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all." It is currently believed that for much of the time humans were evolving, we lived in small groups consisting mostly of close relatives. This may have fostered altruism among group members through kin selection, but it left us for a capacity for organized warfare (which we apparently share, by the way, with chimpanzees). As our weapons have advanced far beyond spears, it may be crucial to our survival to outgrow our past, and recognize our world community as our _de facto_ kin group. 6. "Respect for the interdependent web of existance." Paley, though informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, was utterly wrong about the watch. There is a means other than divine will which can give rise to complexity and purpose. But he had a point in his attitude toward what he called Creation. The world _is_ a place where things are well suited to their environments, and that makes these things interdependent. Certainly this means as a practical matter that we humans should be much more careful about manipulating the natural world, but this fact has a religious dimension as well. We see a kind of cooperation in the natural world along with the ruthless competition. More recent biological theories even suggest that systems of individuals may be an important as individuals or even genes in explaining how the current complexity of life came to be. It remains to be seen how successful such notions might be in explaining the natural world, but if they do work there, they would be bound to have an effect on our social thinking, just as did the ideas of Charles Darwin. [end of sermon] ****************************** The final reading is from _The Lives of a Cell_ by Lewis Thomas. He has just described some microscopic creatures called _myxotricha_, which live inside the stomachs of termites and allow them to digest wood. As summarized by UMass professor Lynn Margulis, these creatures themselves can be thought of as a symbiotic group of still smaller creatures. "There is an underlying force that drives together the several creatures comprising _myxotricha_, and, then drives the assemblage into union with the termite. If we could understand this tendency, we would catch a glimpse of the process that brought single separate cells together for the construction of metazoans, culminating in the invention of roses, dolphins, and, of course, ourselves. It might turn out that the same tendency underlies the joining of organisms into communities, communities into ecosystems, and ecosystems into the biosphere. If this is, in fact, the drift of things, the way of the world, we may come to view immune reactions, genes for the chemical marking of self, and perhaps all reflexive responses of aggression and defense as secondary developments in evolution, necessary for the regulation and moderation of symbiosis, not designed to break into the process, only to keep it from getting out of hand." "If it is in the nature of things to pool resources, to fuse when possible, we would have a new way of accounting for the progressive enrichment and complexity of form in living things."