Today we honor a man who could focus his thought on the smallest beetle,
And who could face questions about LIFE, The UNIVERSE, And EVERYTHING!
Charles Darwin.
Where did we come from?
Where are we going?
When did time begin?
These are religious questions that humans have been trying to confront since
we became human.
Most religions of our World have developed answers for these questions, and
then delivered them to the troubled people, who were supposed to be comforted.
At least one religion, Unitarian Universalist, does not provide people with
the answers.
You know there are many jokes about Uu’s.
The joke most reflective of who we are is this:
When a UU burns something on a lawn, it’s not a cross, it’s a
Question Mark.
Unitarian Universalists address the great religious, mysterious questions
of our being. But we do not provide the answers. Each of us is
free to seek our own beliefs, our own credo. That’s why, at the
UUS:E, some of our most satisfying Sunday Services are when we reveal to
the rest the current results of our search…
Our own search for truth and meaning.
I am Manchester born and raised and plan to live here to my personal end. I
love and admire this town and all that it stands for. However, growing
up in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, Manchester did NOT have a UUS:E, nor anything
like it. Every religious body in Manchester at that time had ready
answers to deliver to me and you about the great mysteries: Life, the Universe,
and Everything.
I did not know about Unitarian Universalism until 1965 when I wandered into
a UU Fellowship in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Those brave souls were asking
the great questions, and they did not provide the answers. When I offered
some thoughts, age 22, they listened patiently and nodded their heads. Interesting! Interesting! They
listened.
I was in my religious Home!
I know we cannot get scientific proof of the answers to those great mysteries,
those great questions – not yet.
But Unitarian Universalists gather and face those mysteries together.
And we respect the inherent worth and dignity of every person (our 1st principle),
no matter what odd ideas they may come up with to address the Great Mysteries. Who
knows? They might be right!
Susan and I married in a Methodist parsonage in Manchester in 1967, 39 years
ago this year. We both were looking for a UUS:E – but there was
none here. We helped start this Society beginning in 1968.
And we’re still here.
I cannot go anywhere else.
These Unitarian Universalists - You guys - have the courage to ask the great
questions,
to Face the Great Mysteries,
to Not allow yourselves the comfort of some dogma or orthodoxy,
And to respect each other’s attempts at an answer.
So why today do we honor Charles Darwin?
Charles Darwin faced the great questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Charles Darwin looked straight into life, and he saw.
Charles Darwin had the courage to seize the truth in front of him,
to study it in the minutest detail,
and study it in the largest view he could grasp.
Charles Darwin could think, as our own Bill Jawitz might say, Outside the
Box.
Charles Darwin had the courage to sail away to new worlds, new worlds of
this planet,
and of the Mind.
He had the courage to think beyond anyone else’s thoughts.
He had the courage to present those thoughts to a world he knew would shun
them, and him, to mock him (the monkey man).
The thought and ideas of Charles Darwin are still, in the 21st Century, so
far Out of the Box, that Charles Darwin is still a favorite target of leaders
of other religions.
So, what did Charles Darwin do and say?
Why is he my hero? the epitome of a modern Unitarian Universalist who
adheres to our 4th principle: A free and responsible search for truth and
meaning?
Charles Darwin. Born in England on the same day as Abraham Lincoln, 2/12/1809,
not in a log cabin, but into a well-to-do medical and industrial family.
England from 1809 to 1882 when Darwin died had a monarchy.
The Church of England held the state’s version of religious truth including:
God created the world in 6 days, and
Man was created in God’s own image and, therefore, was special in the
world of animals.
Slavery was accepted in much of the world, the United States included.
Reading and Writing skills were rare, even in England.
Education, even for the wealthy of Darwin’s class, consisted of rote
memorization of classical subjects: Such as dead languages
In the seemingly scientific world of medicine, bloodletting was presumed
a good thing.
Even as a teen, Charles Darwin was a seeker of truth. He became an avid beetle hunter, competing with other young naturalists to find examples of the beetle. He took pride in finding a new beetle.
From his autobiography, written for family and friends, he told this story:
One day, on stripping bark from a dead tree, he pinned down two rare types
of beetle, one in each hand. Suddenly he saw a third, a new species,
too good to lose. His action was that of a trained egg-collector. He
popped the right-hand one in his mouth. Unfortunately it was a bombardier
beetle, which promptly lived up to its name by squirting a noxious boiling
fluid into his throat, momentarily stunning him. He spat the beetle
out, losing it on the ground, and in the confusion dropped the others too.
Outdoors? He was alive!
He thrilled to the hunt, especially for those beetles.
Darwin came from an extraordinary family.
His grandfather: Erasmus Darwin, a medical doctor, wrote “Zoonomia” in
1796. Erasmus Darwin rejected the doctrine of creationism. He
imagined that creatures could be gradually transformed under the influence
of their needs! Erasmus despised religion.
Darwin’s other grandfather was also imposing.
Josiah Wedgwood was the son of potters, and made his fortune
with Wedgwood Pottery!
Josiah was a staunch Unitarian. There is but one God. He
had the 1800s’ Unitarian’s attitude of tolerance, openness, and
charity.
Erasmus and Josiah were dear friends. They got their children to marry.
Robert Darwin wed Susannah Wedgwood who
bore him 6 children, Charles being the 5th.
Susannah died in 1817 leaving all in her family in deep grief. Charles,
then age 8, was long disappointed that medicine could not save his mother.
Dr. Robert Darwin was a highly successful physician with a lucrative practice. He
sent his outdoors-loving son to a day school run by a Unitarian minister,
the Rev. Case.
Charles Darwin later said:
“The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank,”
His passions at the time were hunting and fishing.
Dr. Robert Darwin, said to his son Charles:
“You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will
be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”
Would that his father could have seen his son Charles buried with great pomp
in Westminster Abbey!
When Charles was 16 in 1825, Dr. Darwin sent him to the University of Edinburgh
for 2 years to prepare for the practice of medicine, so successfully pursued
by Grandfather Erasmus and Father Robert. His uncle, also
named Charles Darwin, had been a student at Edinburgh at age 20 doing an
autopsy, when he became infected and died. Our Charles Darwin tried to avoid
autopsies.
He’d rather chase after beetles.
Dr. Robert Darwin was disappointed in Charles’ progress at Edinburgh,
and so he sent him in 1827, age 18, to Cambridge to pursue a career in the
Church of England, to
be an Anglican Priest.
He did like studying Natural Theology, the harmony of nature,
which could ultimately be explained only through Divine Providence. The
intent was to promote the existence and superior intelligence of God by arousing
admiration for the Wonders of Nature.
Sound familiar?
Over his lifetime, Charles Darwin came to accept a part of Natural Theology,
the interdependent web of all existence,
our 7th principle, but he rejected the God part of it.
In 1831, the HMS Beagle was a ten-gun brig, eleven years
old and rotting. It was being completely rebuilt as a three-masted
bark in the naval dockyard at Plymouth. Captain Robert Fitzroy,
himself only age 26, was supervising the rebuilding.
The young captain feared losing his mental health on the two-year voyage. He
would have to remain aloof from the crew in order to lead them. Therefore,
he would be alone. The voyage could well take three years, since the
Beagle had been given the hard task of mapping and measuring vast portions
of the World.
Therefore, Captain Fitzroy wanted a companion on the voyage with whom he
could converse, and not have to command. He would share his captain’s
table with the person, who had to be a gentleman. In his search for
such a person, he found the eager Charles Darwin.
The voyage of the Beagle is part of science lore. The little bark sailed from England in 1831, and returned in 1836. Nearly 5 years at sea, Charles Darwin observed with wide eyes. His enthusiasm showed in his many letters and later books. He gathered data at a prodigious rate, along with specimens that he shipped home to England. He credits the voyage with all that followed.
When his thoughts and private writings had led him finally to his theory of evolution, he published the Origin of Species in 1859, and took much heat. What about those 6 days!
He continued his thinking and published The Descent of Man in 1871. Now Darwin had really done it. Man is descended from a monkey!
To best honor Charles Darwin today,
We must seek truth and meaning,
Even if it leads to challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Charles Darwin lived our 4th principle, and so should we.
One more point to make the point:
Into his last days, sick and confined, Charles Darwin continued his research
and thought. In 1881, age 72, he published The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits.
He died in 1882.
He kept after truth and meaning to the end.
