Evolution, awe, and original sin (part I)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

Now the earth was formless and empty,darkness was over the surface of the deep, 

and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” 

And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1 (NIV)

I have never understood the purported conflict between religion and science. Yes, on occasion there are clashes over divergent values--e.g. when scientists want to experiment on embryos and people of faith raise ethical concerns. But the same value clashes happen e.g. between scientists and secular animal rights activists, over the fate of lab animals. Or between religious people who have different life ethics such as "against abortion" vs. "against war".

So, apart from these very real issues that occasionally pop up, science and religion have been coexisting, for centuries, as complementary ways of knowing. And every now and then, their respective quest for truth leads them on paths that touch, or almost touch. This beautifully written piece by physicist Marcelo Gleiser is an example for that: a breathtaking vignette on the evolution of life. I'm quoting it at length here to convey some of its flavor.

Ours is an old story, starting some 13.8-billion years ago, when our collective father, the universe, came into being. (Maybe the cosmos should be a mother as well; it's up to you, dear reader.) (...) The first stars appeared some 200 million years after the Big Bang.

Recall that stars are balls of hydrogen, nuclear-fusion furnaces that make hydrogen into helium at a furious pace. That's where it all starts, with hydrogen, the simplest of all chemical elements, becoming all others, all the way to carbon to iron to uranium. (...) We carry in our bodies the products of this cosmic alchemy, forged in stars dead billions of years ago. We are the memory of this distant past, molecular conglomerates that assumed a form complex enough so that stars could remember.

In a choreography of cosmic proportions, gravity sculpts matter, making it flow here and there, spin around, take different shapes, spirals, elliptical, spherical swarms of millions to hundreds-of-billions of stars. (...) About one star per year is born in our galaxy; our sun and its planets appeared some 4.6-billion years ago.

Earth is a special planet. Just take a look at pictures of other worlds to see why. It's special because it's covered in water and it has an oxygen-rich atmosphere that protects the surface — and life thereon — from the constant hostility of outer space; in particular, from cosmic and solar radiation. We live in a blue womb, an oasis of life in a cosmos that is — at least as far as we know — lifeless, cold and hostile.

Earth's climate, warm and stable, allows for life to thrive, to explode into a bewildering diversity. A short stroll through a jungle or a coral reef and we are overcome by the ecological wealth, plants and animals that fight for survival, searching for food, struggling to preserve their genetic imprint (...). Life uses the present to create the future.

Wow. 

At this point, do yourself a favor. Go back to Genesis 1 and read it in its entirety.

Notice anything?

Exactly: this is the way Genesis was meant to be read. Not as a drab account of six literal weekdays but as a sacramental rendition of events of overwhelming magnitude in time and space. Of processes so completely out of our control, and yet so intimately woven into each of our lives, that we have to muster all our courage and all our capacity for awe to do them justice and read them the proper way. 

There is no fundamental conflict between religion and science unless we create one. Both are routes to insight and awe, each "according to their kind". It is our own hearts and minds that create problems from them: by succumbing to the temptation of seeking fault lines instead of surveying the landscape as a whole.

Owing nothing

"I am God, your God. (...)

I will not accept a bull from your house,

or goats from your folds.

For every wild animal of the forest is mine,

the cattle on a thousand hills.

I know all the birds of the air,

and all that moves in the field is mine.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you,

for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls,

or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving

and pay your vows to the Most High.

Call on me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."

Psalm 50:7-15 (NRSV).

Mulling over her part hilarious, part depressing observations at church, a witness to the fumbling and clunky ways we humans attempt to pay tribute to God, writer Annie Dillard concludes:

God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity [i.e., immerse ourselves in clunky church experience], that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these things. (...)
You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these things--unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on him.
You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

(from: Teaching a Stone to Talk)

God does care about us, of course. His healing power is woven into the very fabric of this world, always available to us as we heed its beckoning. On occasion, it even enters our lives, unbidden. But God doesn't require any particular ritual or faith practice. It is us who need those to know Him. 

Likewise, our gratefulness, our calls for help, our attempts to live a faithful life are not some spiritual tax we owe. Their purpose is to guide us into life abundant. Out of abundance, our songs of praise arise naturally.

Faith of experience, faith of practice

The other night, as I walked down the outside stairs of the building I work in, bathing in the red glow of the setting sun that reflected from the walls and illuminated the cityscape while blades of grass were shivering in the odd spring cold, I caught a glimpse of why I've (again) become discouraged with this blog.

What I've been doing here, mostly subconsciously, is try to share my experience of God in the hope of arriving at a way of thinking about God. Both has failed: for God cannot be captured or preempted in words. We have to experience Him in and through our lives: and experience constantly changes, it morphs, grows, and matures. On top of that, we all experience and think about God in different ways. What really matters is not so much what we say or think but that we integrate our experience, that we make it our home in Eternity.

In brief, what I've really been looking for was a way of practicing faith, and I may have found one. More on that later. In the meantime, may the Spirit be with you. He is there: in the splendor of morning's first rays, the darkening trek of clouds at dusk, the unrelenting heat of noon and the silence of midnight. All it takes to see is listening.