Darwin's Walk

Darwin’s Walk
Rev. David Robins
February 8, 2009
February 12 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species.
Much has been written about Charles Darwin’s gradual loss of conventional religious belief and faith. Yet Darwin never lost his sense of wonder of the natural world. He never lost his curiosity about how creatures came to be as they are. He never lost his sense of humility before a world containing an immense variety of life. He never lost his respect for knowledge and understanding. He never relinquished his devotion to reason as a gift beyond all others. He never sought to offend people, or convert them to his agnosticism. He never lost his devotion to truth as he pursued it.
He may have had Deist views, that a God may have set the laws of the universe in motion and then gradually withdrew from intervening in its functioning. As a child, he attended the Unitarian Church in Shrewsbury with his mother, and many Unitarians of that time were Deists. Darwin might have called himself a religious humanist were he alive today. He was not a church go-er, but he was religiously faithful to understanding his world. He was not spiritual in a conventional sense, but he was transformed by an openness to the “forces that create and uphold life.”
 
 
 
Darwin hesitated to publish, knowing that his theory of unguided, random natural selection as the key to evolution would shock and offend many people. He delayed publishing for years hoping to avoid an angry public. He was a very conservative man who opposed revolutionary behavior. In particular, his wife Emma was a devout Christian in the Church of England, and he did not wish to make life difficult for her. She in turn, feared that his ideas would prevent him from joining her in the afterlife. It is said that Charles and Emma had only two arguments in their marriage. The first was on their wedding night when Charles discussed his theory of natural selection. The second was when they discussed his agnosticism. Their marriage was preserved by not talking about these topics.
His theories remain controversial today to people with faith a Creator God, or to the religious theory of Intelligent Design. The National Center for Science Education monitors school boards and states where people wish to dilute the teaching of evolution in school, or give equal time to the teaching of creationism.
            Darwin did not set out to be a naturalist scientist. He first tried his hand at medicine, then decided to study theology at Cambridge. By chance, he attended a lecture by a professor of Botony, Rev. John Stevens Henslow, and was forever changed by the encounter. Henslow became Darwin’s mentor and guide through the sciences, and once commented, “That fellow Darwin is always asking questions!” It was Henslow who recommended Darwin for the position of naturalist aboard the Beagle. It was to Henslow that Darwin shipped tens of thousands of specimens from his time on the Beagle as it explored South America.
Though Henslow was a minister of the Church of England, and encouraged Darwin, not all of the church was so supporting. Recently, the Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, the Church of England’s director of mission and public affairs issued a conciliatory statement, reading, “Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of faith seeking to understanding, and hope that makes some amends.” The statement is a testament to being open and gracious and reconciling…religious qualities that our world sorely needs.
            In his time, evolution was not a new theory. It had been proposed that humans were related to apes as long ago as the 1500’s when apes were first found in Africa and brought to Europe. Darwin’s grandfather proposed a theory of evolution in the 1700’s. What Darwin did that none of the others had done, was to gather enough evidence from his study of flowers, insects, and animals to prove to his satisfaction that his theories on species, natural selection and evolution were true. He continued to ask questions and sought answers about what he observed…Why do so many similar animals exist so far apart geographically? Why were adjacent areas populated by similar though not identical species?
Darwin went on to publish three more books which expanded upon his theories of natural selection and evolution. In 1868 he released, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. In 1871 his book, the Descent of man and Selection in Relation to Sex, applied the theory of evolution to people’s moral sense and sexual selection. In 1872 he published the Expression of the emotions in man and Animals, which was prompted by his questions about yawning. His questions about plant reproduction led to three books, On Orchids, Cross Pollination and Self-Fertilization in Plants, Climbing Plants, and Insect Eating Plants. His final book was written out of a curiosity with earthworms and their effect on soil, titled, Earthworms and Their Fertilization of the Soil. Not all of write books based upon our curiosities and questions, but if Darwin had any advice to the average person who enjoys nature, it would be: Ask Questions; Be Curious; Talk with others about your questions; Make Guesses; Seek Answers; Never stop Observing.
Darwin used walking as a way to think and to observe. He had a route around his property that he would walk again and again each day. It was said that he would stop and stand for so long, lost in thought, that squirrels imagined him to be a tree and climbed his legs.
At the end of his life, Darwin admitted that due to his single-minded study of nature, his musical, religious and poetic abilities had atrophied. He did not convert on his deathbed. He remained firm in his scientific convictions. His research and thinking led him to believe that Genesis was not good science, that he was an agnostic regarding the existence of God, but that the Christian testaments were a model for living a life of integrity, humility, charity and industry. He wrote that the golden rule was the foundation of all morality.
Darwin dies of a heart attack in 1882. His friends wanted to put a quote on his headstone from Emerson…”Beware when God lets loose a thinker on this planet.” Instead, according to his wishes, the gravestone reads simply,
Charles Robert Darwin
Born 12 February 1809
Died 19 April 1882
 
Mapping the genetic code project has confirmed the insights of the theory of evolution. At the most basic level, human beings are closely related to the genetic material found in all other species on earth. “One of the greatest discoveries from the ability to sequence genomes is that there is a grand unity to life and that all forms of life on this Earth have a common ancestor.” (Martin Kreitman, Tribune, 2.1.04) Scientifically this bears out the fundamental insight of Unitarian Universalism….Life is a unity. Our commonalities are universal.