The Paradigm Shifters

Rev. Kristi Denham
Congregational Church of Belmont
February 15, 2009

Today is Evolution Sunday. Over 1000 congregations across our nation and our world are celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday today. We’ve honored this day in this way for several years now and for most of us there is no question that science and our faith can coexist comfortably together.

How many of you take evolution for granted?  I am mostly preaching to the choir when I lift up the significant contributions of Darwin to our human understanding. Although only 40% of Americans agree with us and 36% have no opinion on the subject at all.

I had promised that we would invite many of the scientists in our midst to speak in praise of science and faith. But most are out of town today. I received a lovely note from Geoff Fernald who lives in New Hampshire this half of the year and is here in Belmont the other half. He shared eloquently his thoughts on science and I want to share some of his words with you now.

“For those who don't already know this I am an electrical engineer who spent his life helping teams create new products spanning widely different technologies: rapid transit vehicles, oil refinery motor controls, super- computers, medical ultrasound machines and cochlear implants that cure deafness. So, on this remarkable 200 year anniversary what exactly should I say about science?

Is Science, as Karl Popper the science philosopher says, the ability to propose an idea for which we can only prove that it isn't wrong yet? Or is it the ability to take a problem apart down to a small enough element to test whether one proposed answer can be validated?

Is that what Marconi did, with a bit of a showmanship in 1901, trying to help America believe we could talk through the ether to Europe? And after his 'demonstration' no fewer than five hundred technical people worked behind his histrionics solving one small problem after another to make radio true.
Making a microphone, making a triode that amplifies an infinitely small signal, figuring out antennas that eventually would occupy only a stub on our cell phones to name a few? 

Perhaps this is what science has brought us, not progress by one genius, but progress by thousands working figuratively side by side until the problems are solved and something useful can be made from the answers.

Yes, Darwin, our evolution hero, it was hard enough finding out ,as Carl Sagan put it, that we were some miniscule dot in the universe, almost impossible to find if you were a galaxy away. Our Darwin, bless his sea going heart, told us we descended from bacteria!  Well, he didn't tell us that right away, that would truly be too shocking, but eventually that's what we found out in our latest decade from those darn scientists. Bacteria, can you imagine!?

So how are we to respond to these demoting scientific truths? Maybe Jesus, who told us to be humble in the face of God had it right, though in our new social structure not only in the face of God, but also in the face of science. 

I, personally, think this is a good place for us to be. We certainly still have each other, we have our faith and we have the slow, step by step, but rewarding efforts of scientists to bring us to the brink of understanding the beginnings of life, the start of the universe and our place in it, the view of our planet from the moon and space to realize we have to take care of our very own spaceship to survive. 

And, just maybe we will be able to make our whole world a fair and just place to live and to eat, to contribute in varied and beautiful ways, to stand up and move forward in spite of those others made bitter and angry by their circumstance, warring against discovery. 

I for one stand with the bacteria that made us. Thank you. Thank you for getting around to naturally selecting us into existence. We are up to the task of the next steps. Science, family, justice. All of it. 

Darwin’s work on “The Origin of the Species” changed our understanding of humanity’s place in the scheme of things dramatically. As Geoff says, we are challenged to see that we are descended not just from apes but from bacteria.
Our creator works through change, and those who adapt well to changing times are more likely to have descendants in succeeding generations. This scientific understanding of the way the universe works has shattered many comfortable assumptions about our place in the cosmos. It initiated a paradigm shift that continues to reverberate through the centuries.

If we are descended from bacteria, are not all created beings our brothers and sisters? And the biblical stories must be understood not as the absolute, literal words of God, but rather as the inspired words of human beings about God. They enlighten and guide because they help us see our relationship with the Holy as humanity has understood it through the ages. We do not make an idol of our sacred texts. God is so much bigger and more mysterious than we will ever understand.

Paradigms are difficult to discuss or define because they represent the air we breathe, the soup we swim in, the unconscious assumptions upon which our lives are built.

For many centuries the world was experienced as flat. When Copernicus helped us to realize our Earth was round and revolved around the sun, a sea change in understanding began to unfold. This was a paradigm shift brought on by one field of science.

Darwin affected a similar paradigm shift in understanding for the biological sciences. His theory of evolution continues to be affirmed by every ongoing study of DNA, the human g-nome project and every biological field currently known. To dismiss it as “only” a theory would be absurd. It would mean asking us rather to believe in a confounding trickster of a God who creates evidence of evolution at every turn but expects us to deny it all in favor of an ancient text’s six literal days of creation, 6000 years ago, despite all indications to the contrary. It asks us to believe God is a liar when it comes to physical evidence but only tells the truth in one old book, our Bible.

So a paradigm shift of one sort began with the publication 150 years ago of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.”

But we are also celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s birthday today. That these two great men were born on the same day 200 years ago has been made much of in the media lately. Both men contributed greatly to our human understanding. Darwin in science. Lincoln in politics. Both men were very human. Darwin suffered from anxiety. Lincoln from depression. Neither was purely wise or without feet of clay. There is evidence in their writings that as men of their times they were both somewhat racist. Lincoln’s decision to free the slaves may have been more based in expediency than on a belief in human equality. But debates aside, he stood for the dignity of all men (women would have to come later). He lived out the truth that human value is not based on one’s status at birth but on how one chooses to live. In honoring his legacy today we are honoring the potential for greatness in every one of us.

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