Evolution Sunday

Given by the Rev. Lee Barford, Feb. 11, 2007
Text: Genesis 1:1-27, Psalm 136:1-9, Job 38:1-18, John 1:1-14

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable before you, O LORD, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen.

Evolution Sunday: Today is an experiment called “Evolution Sunday.” A couple of hundred churches around the country are participating. Evolution Sunday is a response to those who go into the public square and say that acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory is incompatible with Christian faith. Our response, and those of the other hundreds of churches participating in Evolution Sunday is this: Evolution, and all science, is compatible with Christian faith. It is compatible with the Bible. And more than merely compatible. If the Christian faith is truth and science is also truth, then we should expect only that they not contradict each other, but that they enlighten each other. That one should bring new understanding to the other. And this is in fact the case.

Now before I explain what I mean by that, I'd better define what I mean by “evolution.” I mean this. “Evolution” is short for “evolution of species by natural selection.” In other words, evolution means that a species---whether bacteria, plants, animal, us---arises by accumulating mutations. Some of these mutations survive and others die out because some mutations make some individuals better able to survive the circumstances they are in.

In the hundred and fifty years since Wallace and Darwin proposed this theory, it has been under virulent attack. Can you think of any other idea from science, social science, history, mathematics, that is so unpopular people try to get it pushed out of the schools? And at the same time, the scientific arguments for evolution have become ever more certain. Twenty-five years ago, the arguments for evolution were largely based on comparing structures in different living things and in fossils. The evidence was descriptive, and you could imagine reasonable people differing about it. But biology has changed from being a descriptive science to being quantitative. You can now measure the differences between my genes and yours, the differences between ours and a chimpanzee, ours and a geranium, ours and a bacterium. And when scientists do those measurements of genetic material, they find that the results match pretty closely the evolutionary trees—the ones that show ancestors for all species--put together by biologists from looking at bones and microscope slides. At this point, evolution is supported by as much evidence as any other idea ever.

But, MY, what an emotional reaction the idea of evolution generates! Why? I think its because it tears us humans away from the center of the universe. We are a part of creation, related to the rest of creation, it says, not something separate from everything else, better than everything else.

Now you could go looking to the creation stories in the Bible to prop up a view that humans are the God-ordained purpose of creation. But you can't find it. The Bible says THAT God created this and created that. But it doesn't say how. Genesis does say that God gave humans every plant and animal for food and gave us dominion, ruler-ship, over the Earth. But in the Bible, ruler-ship is never absolute: it is always bound up with a covenant relationship with God, with stewardship, and with the requirement that the ruler do justice.

So if you want to attack evolution with scripture, you are reduced to picking at nits. Some argue like this. The Bible says God created the universe in seven days. Evolution takes billions of years. So evolution is un-Biblical. The problem is that the Bible itself points out that God's time is not our time: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday1...”, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day2.” So arguing against evolution with Scripture is not consistent with Scripture.

We're not going to find in the Bible contradictions to science. And that's because the Bible isn't a book about science. It's a book about God, and about God's relationship with humanity, and about our relationships with each other. Science is a way of reading another of God's books, the book that is the creation. Science tells how the universe works. The Word of God tells us how to live with God and one another.

Now that doesn't mean that science and Christianity have nothing to say to one another. Some evolutionary theorists now say that choice plays a role in evolution. For example, a flock of birds might fly out over the ocean---a collective choice---and be blown to a new island, and, through isolation from their kind, evolve into a new species. Consider the story of Adam and Eve. They're in the garden of Eden. They choose to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And all of a sudden they KNOW good from evil. Sounds like magic, doesn't it? But if we add in some knowledge of evolution, we get something different. We had ancestors that didn't know good from evil: some single-celled creature doesn't. We do. So some ancestors of ours made the transition. And the story of Adam and Eve says that that transition, that gaining of knowledge was in part a choice. Before the choice we were in Eden. With no knowledge, we had no cares, no responsibility. But with the choice, the transition to knowing good from evil comes responsibility for carrying out the good and avoiding the evil. Being cast out of Eden isn't punishment, it is growth. It is a natural and necessary result of humanity's evolution into moral actors.

So science can have something to say about interpreting the faith. But does faith have something to say to science. I think it does. What faith says to science is this: Know the place of science. Science tells us about how nature functions. It cannot tell us the difference between good and evil, justice and injustice. We know that because it has been tried. For example, social Darwinists argued that we should all be left free to compete with each other in life, business, and employment for the good of evolution of the human species. If the competition for survival makes nature “red in tooth and claw3” so can we be. This idea has been a justification for everything from unsafe, unhealthy factories to infanticide of children deemed unfit, unworthy. I want to be clear on something: I am not accusing scientists of done horrible things. I am saying that others---politicians, demagogues, dictators, and political and ethical philosophers---have wrapped themselves in the mantle of science to justify these things. The problem is not that science is immoral. It isn't IM-moral. But it is A-moral. Science is completely materialistic: its method can only account for what can be sensed. So when you ask moral questions of science, when you ask science how to live, how to treat others, how to live in society, you get nonsensical answers.

In today's reading from Job, God asks Job a number of questions that SOUND scientific on the surface. God is almost asking How big is the earth?, How deep is the sea? But God isn't asking those sort of questions at all: He is asking, Were you THERE when I created the Earth?, WHY did I decide to make the sea as it is? “Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness?” The really big questions of life, of love and of sorrow, of peace and of war, of joy and of suffering do not find answers from science.

To sum up: Genesis cannot teach biology. The Theory of Evolution cannot teach us how to live as the God of love and justice would have us live.

In the name of Christ our savior. Amen.

1 Psalm 90:4, King James Version.

2 2 Peter 3:8

3 Tennyson, “In Memoriam A.H.H”

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