The Relatedness of Life

January 18, 1959
Akron

THE POSITIVE TEACHINGS OF THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH -
III - "The Relatedness of Life"

In some lines called "God the Architect," Harry Kemp expressed the poet's image of the Relatedness of Life:

"Who Thou art I know not
But this much I know;
Thou has set the pleaides
In a silver row

"Thou has sent the trackless winds
Loose upon their way:
Thou has reared a colored wall
Twixt the night and day;

"Thou hast made the flowers to bloom
And the stars to shine;
Hid rare gems of richest ore
In the tunneled mine;

"But chief of all Thy wondrous works
Supreme of all Thy plan,
Thou has put an upward reach
Into the heart of man."

These rhymed lines can be prosaically stated in a sentence expressing the positive Universalist teaching of the relatedness of Life: "All forms of life are related; there has been steady growth and development through the ages, and that this growth and development are in process now, and must continue always."

This religious appraisal and prediction merges with science in the doctrine of evolution. If a person is one of the small minority who rejects the scientific evidence for evolution, he may feel that the human family is down-graded by inferring that evolution describes man as being only a higher animal. In this year of the Darwin Centennial (THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES was published in 1859), I would like to discuss the relatedness of life in terms of the Darwinian Revolution, then speak of the kind of religion implicit in an evolutionary cosmos, and, in addition, comment on the place of man in our mysterious, living universe.

Charles Darwin touched off a revolution. He was not the first to conceive of creation as growth, but his dramatic collection of scientific data, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES provided the evidence to construct a scientific hypothesis of evolution supported by both the observation of living creatures, as well as the fossil evidence of the rocks. Andrew White, in his classical study, THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY, (Vol. 1, p. 70) remarked, "Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES had come into the theological world like a plough into an anthill. Everywhere those thus rudely awakened from their comfort and repose had swarmed forth angry and confused. Reviews, sermons, books light and heavy, came flying at the new thinker from all sides."

Bishop Wilberforce, of Oxford, led the theological attack on science. Speaking of Darwin's ideas, Bishop Wilberforce congratulated himself in public that HE was not descended from a monkey. Huxley's devastating reply to Wilberforce is still incisive, "If I had to choose, I would prefer to be a descendant of a humble monkey rather than of a man who employs his knowledge and eloquence in misrepresenting those who are wearing out their lives in the search for truth."

Nevertheless, the churchmen mounted the battlements and for years tried to refute Darwin's theory with theological war-whoops. A then noted clergyman, Vice-president of an institution to "combat Science," declared the theory of evolution an attempt to dethrone God. Another proclaimed that Darwin had done "open violence to everything which the creator himself has told us in the scriptures."

The number of preachers is countless who attempted to refute scientific evidence with remnants of ancient myths, handed down from the folk-lore of semitic peoples. But the fact remains that in spite of the "God or Gorilla" type of sermon, an overwhelming majority of scientists and educators are convinced of the essential truth of evolution. The theory is so widely accepted that it is hardly controversial, now, except in those fundamentalist circles which still maintain the extreme in primitive views about life and its origins.

The folly of much of organized religion in the exciting history of this scientific-theological debate, does not reside in the naive opposition, so much as it does in the wretchedly inaccurate distortions twisted into scientific discussion. The most flamboyant example was the spectacular Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1924. It can be said, only somewhat facetiously, that Clarence Darrow made a monkey out of William Jennings Bryan.

The pathetic part of much respectable religion during the lively debate which exploded a century ago, was the unfairness of religious leaders. When Henry Fairfield Osborn, noted zoologist, lectured on THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES at Yale, he found himself unintentionally in the theological arena. This was his comment, "I recently delivered at New Haven, a perfectly innocent address on the Origin of Species; in it there was not a word about religion, but when it bore the headlines imprint it appeared in all parts of the United States as 'Osborn raps traditional theology,' or 'Osborn declares science and religion irreconcilable.'" (RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS, EDWARD LONG, JR.)

John Haynes Holmes once said that the three persons who have had the greatest influence on modern civilization were Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin. In this centennial year of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, it is fitting then that tribute be paid to the honorable life and notable work of Charles Darwin.

In spite of the cries and alarms of the anti-evolutionist fundamentalist, the wide acceptance of the theory of evolution has not meant rejection of worthy religious convictions.

As persons have become persuaded that evolution has scientific validity, it is readily apparent that this belief in growth fits more harmoniously with the idea of natural law than does the old notion of special creation. Professor Sanborn Brown, of M.I.T. commented in a paper read to a theological school alumni association, "...the process of evolution is a process of making order out of disorder. Randomly distributed cells are formed into orderly arrays, more complicated structures are made out of simpler, and man comes from the amoeba..." Concluding his paper, the scientist comments, "When a physicist looks about him in the world, he cannot help but marvel constantly at the magnitude of space and time, at the paradoxical intricacies and ultimate simplicity of physical laws, and at the amazing operation of biological development which has produced man himself..."

Many scientists, Robert Millikan among others, have found their most meaningful concept of God beginning with the belief in natural law, the orderliness of the universe. True it is that the god as "orderliness of the universe" is not the personal "Yahveh" of the old Hebrews. But we live in a cosmos where the most remote reaches of galaxies stagger even the most imaginative mind. The idea of Yahveh, who spies on Adam from behind a tree, becomes paltry and provincial before the vision of a power, - a process, which is the cause of both great expanding universes and microscopic living cells. It is to add marvel to wonder to realize that both the macrocosm and microcosm operate on natural and orderly principles of growth. Alfred Noyes poetically phrased his awe,

"Tis not the lack of links
within the chain
From cause to cause, but that
The chain exists
That's the unfathomable mystery."

Colin Wilson, (RELIGION AND THE REBEL, pg. 309) commented that both philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and playwright George Bernard Shaw, "conceive the whole of nature as a single living organism, like one living body, and all events in it as biological cells."

Even if strict definition proposes that what is termed natural law is no more than statistical probability, in our mysterious world is not this probability reason for wonder? It is with a faith in the orderliness of the life we experience, a "life-faith," where we can say with the writer of the New Testament "Letter to the Hebrews," "Faith is the giving substance to things hoped for, the assurance of things unseen." Although the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension, we can, like the poet, think of "one divine, far-off event to which the whole creation moves."

Think then on the vast implication of the relatedness of all life. Man is a living part of a living universe. Man is a product of growth, adaptation, who by his own consciousness of purpose, plays an active role in the mysterious life process.

There is no doubt that animals can learn. Not only Pavlov's dog, but all animals can make changing responses, according to training and conditioning. But man seems not only to be somewhat plastic so that he too may be socially conditioned, but something unique has emerged in man's consciousness of himself. Man is not merely a mimeographed copy of other men. Each man is different.

Among other attributes, man makes judgments about good an evil. You may recall that Le Comte De Nuoy in his famous book, HUMAN DESTINY, related man's values to the cosmic evolutionary process.

"Good is that which contributes to the course of ascending evolution and leads us away from the animal toward freedom.
"Evil is that which opposes evolution and escapes it by regressing toward the ancestral bondage toward the beast.
"In other words, and from a strictly human point of view, good is the respect for human personality; evil is the disregard of this personality."

Evolution relates to the goodness of life, that man made progress, and is a being whose individual and group welfare is worth the price of human exertion. There are those who believe there has been no progress, that the "good old days" were the best, that man is the down-grade. We are not very near an earthly paradise, but who ever has lived in Utopia? European philosopher, Karl Jaspers (Quoted in Barrett in IRRATIONAL MAN) tells about the Egyptian of 4000 years ago whose hieroglyphic complaint was that things were pretty bad and getting worse, "Robbers abound...no one ploughs the land. People are saying, 'We do not know what will happen from day to day!'"

We should no longer be naive about "progress." Whether we progress or decline is the decision of humans. This is one of the great links in the chain of life. We have not emerged from primeval ooze merely as two-legged mammals with thumbs conveniently placed to handle tools. We are creatures in whom there has grown a consciousness of wider ethical values than body hungers. We are related to all that is, but man alone has attempted to express his relationship in fashion, art, sculpture, poetry, music, politics and religion. The totality of culture gives us not only an apprehension of our living organic tie with all life, but also a sense of human purpose,

"As we overcome all these limitations,
We may rise on stepping stones of (our)
dead selves
To higher things."

Man lives in a growing universe, is conscious of his own potential and has certain power to direct his own changes. He can subject himself to hideous mutations through degrading the air with atomic radiation. Man can also enlarge the areas of scientific assistance to the best values of the human enterprise, freedom, health, maturity. George Gaylord Simpson, noted curator of the American Museum of Natural History said (THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION, p. 292) "Man's intellectual, social and spiritual natures are altogether unexceptional among animals in degree, but they arose by organic evolution."

When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was well along his years, he was asked how he kept vigorous and retained the ability to write creatively. He pointed to an apple tree full of blossoms, and said "That tree grows a little new wood each year. I suppose it is out of the new wood that blossoms come. I try to grow a little new wood each year."

Man is like that, -- he grows a little, -- but because he is aware of the ways he can direct his growth, his relatedness to the whole life-spirit in the universe becomes the responsibility of choosing the kind of life which would produce new blossoms or could produce dead branches. The glory and peril of man is that he has the power to choose better life or ignominious elimination of his species.

As John Dewey said so well, (A COMMON FAITH),

"We who now live are parts of a humanity that extends into the remote past, a humanity that has interacted with nature. The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by the grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it. Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race. Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind. It remains to make it explicit and militant."