Sheridan Unitarian Universalist Talk

By Janelle Gray

I’d like to tell you a story. I call this Act I: the Universe. It begins with Physics.

A long, long time ago—so long ago that we humans, with our limited life-span, will have a hard time imagining—long before there were forests and prairies and oceans, before, in fact, there was Earth, before there was a sun and planets and stars and space, long before there was our Milky Way Galaxy or any other galaxy, before there was our universe, before all of this—about 15 billion years ago— there was a dot.

This tiny pinpoint of matter, a singularity in scientific terms, was unimaginably hot—something like 10 to the 29^th power degrees—and unimaginably dense. I can’t tell you where this pinpoint was exactly, because everything that would reference place was in it.

One day, the pinpoint began to expand rapidly. There was no explosion, though humans later came to call this the Big Bang, except Unitarians, who call it the Great Radiance!

In the first 3 minutes, protons, electrons and neutrons were born. But the universe was still chaotic and very, very hot, so it would be hundreds of thousands of years more—when things had cooled off—before these subatomic particles would acquire electron shells and become hydrogen and helium atoms.

These first atoms now reacted to gravity, and were pulled together to form gaseous clouds. Gaseous clouds merged, separated, then merged again, taking more thousands of years—the Universe was in no hurry—to form billions of protogalaxies which became billions of galaxies, a finite number as it turned out, each one unique, born out of a process that was never to be repeated. Each galaxy contained billions of stars.

Religious Naturalists say that we are made of stardust, for within the stars, hydrogen and helium reacted, until helium nuclei fused and formed carbon, oxygen, calcium and other elements of the periodic table, elements that are in us and outside of us and everywhere in our world.

About 4.5 billion years ago, in a spiral arm of a galaxy later dubbed the Milky Way, a star formed from the explosion of a supernova. Around this star, stray bits of material coalesced to form comets, moons and planets that orbited the star. One of these planets, of course, was Earth.

Now fast forward a LONG way, to a time span that we can comprehend, about 30 to 40 years ago. A young scientist named Ursula Goodenough is camping in Colorado. Fresh from a college class on physics, she looks at the stars in the night sky and realizes that she is one human among millions, on a planet among many planets in a vast galaxy among many vast galaxies in an unimaginably big universe, that is probably just one of many universes. She turns her head to her pillow and weeps.

This talk is entitled "Can Religious Naturalism Save the World?" At the MDD Conference in Denver last year, the keynote speaker was our self-same weeping heroine—who, never fear, does not weep forever—Ursula Goodenough. Goodenough is a biology professor at Washington University. Her father was a professor of the History of Religion at Yale. She grew up listening to religious discussions around the table, which explains her abiding interest in religion.

Her talk was so inspiring that I rushed to the UU bookstore and bought her book, "The Sacred Depths of Nature" and read it right away. That was a year ago.

Now, I remembered her book to contain well organized chapters laying out step-by-step solutions to each major world problem. I thought this talk would be a piece of cake; just follow her outline.

Two things happened at once, both age-related! I couldn’t find my notes from her talk and when I picked up the book, it was NOT as I recalled! Good reading, but not the Cliff Notes I was hoping for. I’d have to work harder.

Eventually, I realized that I needed to answer 4 questions: What is Religious Naturalism? Why do we need it? Can it co-exist with other religions? And lastly, how might it save the World?

Right out of the gate, we’re hit with that problematic word "religious". In his presentation, Ronn drew a distinction between religion and spirituality. He used the analogy of religion as a cradle for nurturing spirituality. And that is exactly how Goodenough and others who use the phrase "religious naturalism" view it.

Throughout history, they note, culture and religion have co-evolved. Religion has always been part and parcel of the human experience. In fact, some of our evolutionary ancestors are called "homo religiosus" because they buried their dead and marked the graves with flowers and icons. Phil’s sister once asked me, "don’t you think we humans are built to seek spirituality?" Goodenough would agree.

Philosopher Loyal Rue says that religions address 2 interrelated human concerns: How Things Are and Which Things Matter.

The first—how things are—results in cosmology, such as the Creation story in Genesis or the many Native American origin stories. These stories inform the second concern, Which Things Matter, as they attempt to make the case for a morality or ethos, such as the Ten Commandments. The more rich and compelling the cosmological narrative, the more the culture is inclined to follow the moral imperatives.

If you think of this as a parent making up what I call "a bedtime story that bites" to teach a child to do better, you’ll understand how the cosmology of a religion is inextricably linked to its morality. In Christianity, the Creation story involves a supernatural being, God, who has person-like qualities. The "rules" of this religion, in turn, reference God as an explanation for the rules. That is, Thou Shalt Not Kill can be expanded to Thou Shalt Not Kill because I (God) gave you life and only I should take it away. On the other hand, in radical Islam there are stories of virgins in paradise, and to earn that Paradise, you must kill infidels. It isn’t hard for me to imagine that when that story was invented the culture was under attack and the cosmology inspired young men to fight to the death, something made palatable by a promised reward. Again, the story springs from a need and the resultant morality is justified by the story. And around and around and around we go.

This circular reasoning is evident in our own Judeo-Christian morality, which has been so effectively predicated on the existence of a Creator that many people today assume that the presence of morality PROVES the existence of God! How often have you heard that because nearly everyone believes that murder is wrong that that proves God? How often have you been asked, if you don’t believe in God, how you manage to be good? In other words, it is startling to some that morality can exist apart from God. Interestingly, morality as a biological imperative is part of what religious naturalism offers.

What is Naturalism? Well, maybe we should resort to a common UU tactic, and first define what it isn’t! Perhaps when you hear the word "naturalism" you think of spirituality in nature, that feeling of awe or wonder you get from the beauty of a sunset to taking a walk in the woods. While this is definitely an outcome of religious naturalism, it is not what Goodenough means. In her work, Naturalism is synonymous with science; that is, the whole body of physics, biochemistry and biology that inform our understanding of the natural world.

But Naturalism, or science, is in and of itself nihilistic. Nihilism is the absence of meaning, the sense that existence is senseless and useless. Think of our heroine weeping in her pillow beneath a beautiful night sky because physics had, temporarily, destroyed the wonder for her and you will have the essence of nihilism.

Science makes no moral or ethical judgments. It doesn’t provide meaning. It simply tells How Things Are.

Religious Naturalism provides an antidote to the nihilism inherent in science. It gives us not only a way to interpret the cosmos, but permission, via our biology, which I’ll talk about in a moment, to do so. Naturalism needs this religious component to "bind us together"—the very meaning of the word religion—in mystery, wonder and awe.

Goodenough did not continue to weep. Eventually, for her, nihilism yielded to mystery. She asked herself: why is there anything at all, rather than nothing? Where do the laws of physics come from? Why does the Universe seem so strange? Captivated by mystery, the night sky was suddenly a source of wonder and inspiration.

If the story of the Universe is about Physics, Evolution—what I’m calling Act II—is about Biochemistry.

There are so many parts to this story. For me, they all play as Epic, what Susan Barlow, a Unitarian who terms herself an "evolutionary evangelist", calls "A drama of fortune and crisis" with "turning points, close calls, moments of grace or exceedingly good luck" that lead ultimately to us.

One story, in particular, fascinates me, and that is the story of how life came from non-life.

In typical Universe fashion, this didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it was a half billion years after the Earth was formed that conditions became ripe for simple chemicals—chemicals created in the molten core of the supernova that exploded and formed our Sun and Earth—to combine into a molecule that had an extraordinary, here-to-for unknown-in-the-Universe ability: the ability to copy itself.

The ability to reproduce is part of the definition of "Living"; rocks can’t beget other rocks, so they are not alive; we can reproduce, so we are.

For ages, a cell would simply divide into two daughter cells, which then divided into four, and on and on, each cell a virtual copy of the parent. Then one day, something new happened: two cells decided to hook up. Instead of copying themselves ad infinitum ad nauseum, they created a new organism by combining their DNA. And voila, sex was born!

Most of you studied—with or without your consent!—the biological processes called meiosis and mitosis. This is the way we all got here. Simply put, you got half of your chromosomes from your father, half from your mother. The thing is, when your mother’s "half" was being selected for you, it was randomly chosen from the DNA that she got from both of her parents, and the same thing happened with the DNA from your father. "Another way of stating this," says Goodenough, "is that although parents each contribute half of their genetic endowment to a child, they basically end up with a stranger."

Is there visible evidence of evolution today? For me, the answer is yes. WE are. We are the product of an ancient evolutionary process of reproduction. Each of us is totally unique, a genetic combination never seen before and never to be seen again.

And yes again. Our actions towards other species directly impact their survival. For better or worse, WE are acting as agents of Natural Selection.

And yes yet again. Susan Barlow says that the famous "Big Blue Marble", a picture of earth taken from space, is a dazzling reminder that our billions-year old Earth has now evolved to the point that it can "send a piece of itself out to look back and say, ‘Whoa. This is who I am.’"

Evolution is a great story, an inspirational epic, "probably the best myth we will ever have," says Edward O. Wilson, author of "On Human Nature." By myth, Wilson doesn’t mean falsehood, but a grand narrative that gives us a placement in time. But why does the world need this?

The answer is almost self-evident to me. While our problems today are global in nature, the cosmology of most world religions is tribal. When their stories were first told, civilizations were isolated from one another and human impact on the planet was benign. The cosmologies led to ethics that were appropriate to then and there.

But here and now, these same cosmologies are causing grave harm. Never mind the obvious problems with the Biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply"! If you’re planning to spend eternity in heaven and you see this world as a mere blip on your everlasting journey, there is no need to care for it. Luckily, there is an environmental movement afoot amongst Christians, but surely the "rape and scrape" philosophy in our country can be traced in good part to the Bible giving us "dominion" over the earth.

Other cosmologies, like fundamentalist Islam with its injunction to kill infidels, have also had a devastating impact on the world.

Fundamentalist religions in particular, are operating with out-of-date cosmologies. They have been unable to incorporate modern ethics and science into their beliefs. Worse, they have come to see their stories as literally true, making their story that very "idol" the Bible cautions against. And as we see, fundamentalists invest so much in the story’s literal truth that they reject reason and science. One of the results is all out war against evolution.

There’s got to be a better way. For hope, I look to Susan Barlow and Michael Dowd. Dowd was a conservative Christian pastor who often preached and demonstrated against the evils of evolution. Then one day, he heard what is called the Great Story, the evolutionary epic, and broke out in goosebumps. The voice of his god told him "The science-based story of an emerging universe and the Bible are not in conflict. They are mutually enriching."

Ten years later, at a Pentecostal charismatic service, he got another message, delivered, amusingly, in King James English: "Step out boldly with thy beloved and fear not. For I will bless thy steps and thy ministry more abundantly than thou canst imagine." He thought to himself, "You’d better get moving, dude. You don’t even have a girlfriend!"

Several months later, he met Connie Barlow, a Unitarian Universalist, science writer and . . . atheist. In seven months, they were married.

I "borrowed" this love story from a Spring 2006 article in the UU World because Barlow and Dowd symbolize something very important about Religious Naturalism: it works for believers and non-believers. It does not preclude a God, nor does it require one.

There’s a final Act in my story this morning. It’s called Self-Awareness.

We all know there’s something unique about human beings. Although, by definition, all living things are aware of their environment—able to go towards food or away from danger—nothing else in the Universe, as far as we know, is aware of being aware!

We express our awareness of the world and what it means to us via symbols: language, music and art. And we respond to such symbols. Our capacity for language, our ability to think and act symbolically, also appears to be unique in the Universe.

But we’re not only able to use symbols to interpret and share our awareness, we seem compelled to do so. Interpretation, including religious interpretation, appears to be OUR evolutionary path; we are hard-wired for it. Susan Barlow puts it this way: scientists have "made the astonishing discovery that the religious impulse may be too deeply rooted to be rooted out."

For Religious Naturalists, human beings are not only the gatherers of knowledge—the scientists—but the celebrants, too.

The question is, if Religious Naturalism is to become a Global Ethos—if it is to rule the playground, so to speak—how well will it play with the rest of Earth’s religions?

Dowd uses a set of Russian Nesting Dolls as a metaphor for his understanding of this. He says the Universe is "made up of levels of nested creativity: subatomic particles within atoms, within molecules, within cells, within organisms and so on. The largest nesting doll is God, or Allah, Adonai, Source of Life, Ultimate Reality, Nature, the Universe, whatever. This God is not outside of creation, but is an integral part of it—in fact, is it."

Other theologians use a weaving metaphor. The Epic of Evolution, the story of the Universe, is the warp of the loom, made of long, strong, firmly-anchored fibers. This warp, this Way Things Are, is designed to endure, commanding our universal gratitude, reverence and commitment. But after that, we are free to be artists, "to render in language and painting and song and dance our ultimate hopes and concerns and understandings of human nature."

Goodenough says that "Once we have our feelings about Nature in place, then I believe that we can also find important ways to call ourselves Jews, or Muslims, or Taoists, or Hopi, or Hindus, or Christian, or Buddhists."

How can Religious Naturalism save the world? I think I have begun to answer this question. By providing an epic story based on science yet infused with sacred meaning, Religious Naturalism invites us to approach life with wonder and respect, and to take the long view, religious principles Goodenough identifies as Gratitude, Reverence and a Credo of Continuation.

About Gratitude, she writes: In terms of time, we arrived in the Universe "but a moment ago, and found it to be perfect . . . for human habitation, and astonishingly beautiful. . . And then we came to understand that it is perfect because we arose from it and are a part of it."

Gratitude leads to Reverence. "Our story tells us of the sacredness of life, of the astonishing complexity of cells and organisms, of the vast lengths of time it took to generate their splendid diversity, of the enormous improbability that any of it happened at all. Reverence is the religious emotion elicited when we perceive the sacred. We are called to revere the whole enterprise."

Reverence calls forth a Credo of Continuation. Goodenough says, "For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value. The continuation of life reaches around, grabs its own tail, and forms a sacred circle that requires no further justification . . . other than that the continuation continue."

She adds: "We are the dominant species and stewards of the planet—we should be able to figure out how to share the Earth with one another and with other creatures, how to restore and preserve its elegance and grace."

Goodenough shares her father’s favorite metaphor: "’Life is a coral reef. We each leave behind the best, the strongest deposit we can so that the reef can grow. But what’s important is the reef.’"