Since the appearance of the first part of this article, I have had a great deal of interesting feedback from individuals eager to point out the most obvious concern... how can you claim to be a Christian person and still believe in evolution? It is one of my greater disappointments in the early 21st century that 1) so many self-identified Christians in the United States (over 50%) reject evolution or claim not to believe in it and 2) that so many non-religious people seem to believe that a pre-requisite for being a person of faith is that you must also reject evolution as false. Clearly, something is wrong when Christians and non-Christians alike seem to believe that these two world views are simply not compatible.
Let me state from the outset that, as a person of faith, my religious beliefs are completely and utterly unverifiable, they are uniquely mine in that, while they fall into a broader category of Christian belief, they are also informed by my individual experience, my history, my particulars of family, community, and personal intellectual engagement with the faith's fundamental tenets. They are a matter of my private revelation and they are the lens through which I experience and interpret much of what the world offers me. I believe in God, I believe in and embrace the teachings of the Man of Nazareth, and the implications of his birth, life, and death. I believe that the Holy Scriptures of my Judeo-Christian tradition offer a guide to life and that they contain deep and valuable insights into the human condition that are still being unpacked and interpreted in every generation.
And evolution is true.
Evolution is absolutely, completely, and scientifically verifiable. It is not based on private revelation, it is based on empirical, observable fact. And, in fact, evolution IS... whether or not I believe it... just as the sun IS whether or not I believe it. Evolution does not require my assent, my belief, or my acceptance. It simply is. There are those who try to deny it, there are individuals and religious movements that try to say it just ain't so. However, these people need to utterly disconnect from nearly everything known by science today and uphold a worldview equivalent to a flat earth in order to do so... and they are very selective in their application of this world view. Such an untenable position might be en vogue these days, but it will surely collapse under it's own weight after it's public and very political moment has passed and the continued revelation of the truth of evolution unfolds in our scientifically verifiable endeavors.
Let me reiterate... evolution is fact. The evolution of the cosmos, of this planet, of its species, and of human beings is a fact. It is not a theory. In the theory department, we may have a ways to go before we understand completely whether the mechanisms of natural and sexual selection do indeed work the way that Darwin supposed, or whether there are deeper mechanisms at work... but advances in genetics, biology, geology, archaeology, behavioral science, and quantum physics all make abundantly clear that we as a species descended from ancestral primates, who descended from ancestral mammals, who descended from ancestral reptiles, who descended from ancestral eukaryotes, who descended from ancestral amino acid compounds forged in the fires of an infant planet, in an infant solar system in a nearly 14 billion year old universe (and now maybe even the multiverse!) that evolved from a single point of exploding energy of as yet unknown origin at the dawn of space and time in the event we call the "Big Bang." Evolution is undeniable.
And I suggest... that for individuals, communities, and the planet this is very good news indeed.
One of the real problems we have with evolution in the public sphere is the tendency of those who embrace it to suggest or even promote evolution as something at best morally neutral and at worst amoral. This is one fundamental reason that some religionists reject it... it is seen as a competing moral vision to the one offered by their religious traditions.
In this second part of this article, I will explore these supposedly competing visions of religious tradition and evolution and show that they are only NOT incompatible, but mutually complementary - differentiated only by the fact that one is a private, faith-based revelation and one is a public, science-based revelation and that both are subject to interpretation and re-interpretation in light of the other. And while one need not necessarily embrace a religious vision to have a vibrant moral understanding of the way things are, a basic understanding of evolution is no longer optional for us as a species, but imperative. I will attempt to show that evolution as a public, scientifically verifiable revelation offers the best hope for a unified moral vision capable of transforming society and saving us from the brink of the utter moral bankruptcy and collapse that now besets us in our own society and, increasingly, in the larger global community. Atheists, agnostics, and religionists of varied traditions can find common ground in the vision offered by a deeper understanding and application of evolution to our deepening moral crisis.
The Functions of a Moral System
We'll begin with some fundamentals that identify what is meant by morality and how it functions in a society and in the individual. General morality, as synonymous with ethics, is a system of fundamental assumptions that allow us to determine right behavior from wrong. Morality in this sense is about order - order in a society and in the passions of the individual. Moral attitudes function to allow us to:
1 - Locate individuals within groups by means of personal identity;
2 - Regulate the animal instincts that trigger rampant competitive desires inherent in groups and which threaten individual and collective well-being;
3 - Foster cooperation which allows a greater number of groups or individuals access to the resources necessary for life and health; and
4 - Create order and identify the relative value of the component parts of increasingly complex systems.
The issues evident in the breakdown of our current moral systems can be traced to how well they continue to function in the four areas noted above. The moral systems of religious traditions based on private revelation do indeed locate individuals within their group and give them personal identity. However, they do so by creating boundaries between those who belong and those who do not... and increasing sectarianism and modern tribalism locate more individuals outside than inside of the group. These boundaries, as they become increasingly rigid and conditional based on acceptance of dogmatic propositions, fail to include larger and larger portions of society.
Regulation of our competitive desires is symbolized by taboos. Each religious tradition from our earliest animistic revelations to our more current (historically speaking) religious revelations have these taboos in evidence. They are, however, not only culture bound but are also bound by the pre-scientific world views of their originators. In large measure, these taboos were also about establishing individual and group identities over and against the other. Taboos were often about eliminating competitions for resources including food, land, and even sexual partners. While scientific understanding of biology, genetics, and behavioral science have advanced, these lists of taboos have not only not been revised, some religionists have seen fit to proclaim their continued relevance. Thus, even the religious traditions still evidenced in human society today continue to be bound to assumptions about the origin of our behaviors and what is necessary to temper the instincts to competition in a globalized environment. Our traditions have failed to adapt to new understandings of human behavior, genetically programmed instincts, and deeply rooted psychological responses to increasing complexity. Thus, in the realm of private revelation, our current interpretations of religious tradition are no longer functioning to temper our competitive desires.
Cooperation, as deeply programmed in our biology as competition, is symbolized in our religious traditions as rules of behavior toward the stranger, the orphan and widow, the hungry and the poor. Proper behavior in these moral systems is enumerated by the call to feed and clothe others who do without, visit the sick and the lonely, and in acts of forgiveness toward the transgressor in order to welcome them back into the realm of access to entitlements such as food, shelter, and community. However, traditions that have fossilized and failed to adapt to the increasingly complex social and cultural systems of today are left struggling to apply these simple, pre-scientific mandates to social issues that have largely outgrown the capacity of individual acts of compassion or localized tribal cooperation.
Moral systems as determinants of order, or as systems for assigning relative value, are likewise trapped in pre-scientific world views. Information technologies have given us, as individuals and communities, increasing access to facts, ideas, alternatives, and information systems; and advances in science promise to increase exponentially the number of component pieces of information necessary to account for in our ordering and attribution of relative value to them in our society. In basic terms, it is easier to attribute order and relative value in simple systems than in complex ones. And there is often a competition between the orders assigned by individuals in their own lives over and against that as determined by the local community, or the nation, or a globalized society such as we now inhabit. Our sacred scriptures, written when and where they were, do not speak directly to the kinds of complexity we now face. It is not, however, that they cannot be re-interpreted to do so in new a creative ways, but as yet our institutions have failed to attempt this kind of re-interpretation. Instead, we try to force the new information into the old world views, discarding what doesn't fit, or applying pre-scientific understandings to things which science has proven either more complex or utterly different than could have been known by the originators of our religious stories.
A system of moral value must be able to accomplish all of these functions in a way that honors an evolutionary understanding of the world as moving toward ever more complex systems. It must succeed in giving all people a life-affirming identity and place within the whole global society. It must succeed in bringing more individuals into the realm of cooperation and sustainability. It must be compelling enough to temper our competitive desires by providing us with a clear understanding of where those desires originate. And finally, it must be able to accommodate not only our current understanding of the complexity of life as revealed by the sciences, but must also be capable of adapting to new information as it arises and place it all within a framework of relative value that is scalable and life-giving.
Most importantly, it must be a moral system capable of making room for individual private revelation of religious faith. Evolution as a scientifically verifiable reality can provide this framework and the extrapolation of an evolutionary environmental ethics can provide not only the fundamentals of a new moral vision, but can allow those of us from a religious perspective to re-interpret our old stories in ways that are make them relevant, affirming, and sustainable for the future.
Evolution as a Moral Story
The story of Evolution as a meta-narrative for human kind can surely provide every individual and group of individuals a sense of location and identity in the whole of reality. The fact of evolution allows us to reclaim that we are as a species, in fact, not separated from the rest of the globe... it's structure, processes, and abundant life. Every living creature of this planet is a part of the process that has developed long enough over time to give rise to the human species. We are evolved from the most simple of living organisms to a level of complexity that is now capable of being self-reflective. Human beings are the species uniquely capable of producing stories about where we have come from and hence where we are going. We are the universe itself which has finally evolved to the point of being able to look at itself in awe and discover our origins.
We have evolved as a species, and as cultural and social communities within that species in an ever increasing spiral of creative emergence. And we are not independent from the whole of nature and the order it has found... we have arisen out of it... from it... to a unique place in cosmic evolutionary history. Therefore... we can no longer continue to force the natural order into our program... but we must incorporate the human project into the rest of the natural order.
And... no matter how human communities have adapted, changed, and independently of the cultural and social orders that have arisen in varied times and places... we are all fundamentally of the same origins. All of life is... sharing no less than 50% of our overall genetic code with the lowliest of species and as much as 99% with our nearest primate relatives. We are all connected!
An appreciation of evolution and of the cosmic time scale that has guided it can also help us understand the animal instincts that continue to plague us by creating competing desires and engendering conflicts in human society. Genetically programmed into our DNA are behaviors that hail from the times that we were still a primitive species not yet human... and which ensured our survival and our ability to propagate our genetic code for survival. These behaviors, however, which may have served us while we were swinging in trees or slopping around in the muck of the swamp may now compete with behaviors necessary the for socially organized creatures we have become.
The pre-frontal lobes of our species which regulate our abilities to reason, create story and meaning, delineate right from wrong by creating moral systems.. these are a relatively new addition to our species. Our reptilian brain, that part which regulates body function, hunger, sex drive, is a remnant of our previous incarnation as an earlier species. Likewise, our proto-mammalian ancestors left a part of their brain still embedded in ours that create instinctual reactions. Evolutionary science is capable of providing us with a deeper understanding of the human brain and its function so that we can recognize and tame behaviors which emanate from our genetic ancestors.
Evolution shows us that it is not quite the amoral mechanism that some would suppose, but a continually emerging creative phenomenon that has been as equally responsible for fostering cooperation in and among species as much as competition. And often as not, that cooperation does not have selfish or genetically self-serving motives. It simply happens. Yet, even if those motives were completely self-serving, an understanding of them makes one conscious that evolution as a process is not finished yet... and we as a species are still playing a part. To care for the environment becomes a mandate since our survival depends upon the whole. To care for those members of our species who are hungry, poor, disenfranchised... to make sure that diversity in our gene pool has ample opportunity to propagate, is to make a decision to consciously guide the ongoing evolutionary processes that ensure our species survival into the future and our further evolution into whatever the universe in process would create.
Finally, evolution gives us a picture of a system evolving into increasing complexity. The natural processes of gravity and entropy, the grouping and ungrouping of things on the micro and the macro levels, the necessary death of some systems in order to give emergence to newer ones, is an affirming and awe inspiring thing. Applying these evolutionary dynamics to the vast accumulation of information and ideas allows us the necessary perspective to see when it is time for old things to pass away in order to make room for the new. It allows us to be adaptable in new periods of creative emergence and adapt our stories and our self-understanding when new information arises. Applying an understanding of these dynamics to the systems we create gives permission for these systems to be adaptable.
In the next part of this paper, I will discuss an implied evolutionary environmental ethics, and finally in the fourth section for those who are interested, show how this understanding of the forces at work in evolution can breathe new life into old interpretations of religious moral story.
Stay tuned for Part III...
Br. Karekin is a social critic and political activist located in San Francisco and is also the Minister Provincial for Province 8 of the brotherhood of saint gregory. He provides Spiritual Direction for members of the local community, working particularly with members of the transgendered community. He works as Parish Administrator at trinity episcopal church an historic parish in San Francisco. He is also actively involved in the progressive Christian movement aimed at social change.
