Let’s begin looking forward by looking backwards: Ten years ago- 1997. Among other events, the Hale-Bopp comet, remember that? Also, the deaths of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana.
Ten times ten years ago- 1897. The first Oldsmobile was built and Pope Paul VI was born.
Ten times one hundred years ago- the year 1007. The first Viking settlement was begun in Newfoundland and new pueblos were being built in what is now New Mexico.
Times ten again. Ten thousand years ago- The last great Ice Age was melting. The Great Lakes were being filled, and wooly elephants- mastodons- roamed the upper Midwest. Some tribes of Asian Mongolians began moving their way northeast toward the frozen Bering Straits toward a new continent where, 9000 years later, some of their descendents would be found building pueblos.
Ten times that- One hundred thousand years ago. There are tribes of people in places scattered throughout Africa, the Middle East, and in Australia. A few of those from the Middle East have begun trickling into the very cold and hostile environs of Europe. In 50,000 years, some humans- Cro-Magnons- will paint pictures of buffalo and bears and holy men on cave walls in southern France.
Ten times 100,000 years, 1 million years ago. Ten times that, 10 million, Ten times that, 100 million, and 3 ½ times 100 million- 350 million years ago- and we’re getting close to the birthdays of all these little fossilized creatures you’re holding in your hands today.
All of these fossils are mollusks- bipods, some of them, ancient clams. And they resemble exactly the same little bipods still able to be fund alive in lakes everywhere. Most of these fossils are a type of cephalopods- snails with octopus- like appendages reaching out from them. These specifically are a class of cephalopods called ammonites (not to be confused with the Mooninites, lately in the news.) They no longer exist anywhere in the world, even though we’re sitting over top of billions of their relatives right here where we live.
All of these come from the shale hills out by the lake; my wife and I picked them all up there. Some of you may also have some of these cylindrical or round fossils- those are probably pieces of coral. Because for several hundred million years, we were at the bottom of an ocean here. You can also find the occasional shark’s tooth fossil amongst these ammonite and coral fossils- big ones- ten bigger than present day White Sharks. This might be one of them.
About one hundred million years after these little ammonites began frolicking in the surf, their days began to be interrupted by large creatures swimming by, or casting shadows from up in the sky, or, stomping around on the shores of the now receding oceans- dinosaurs. The dinosaur heydays were from about 250 million to 65 million years ago. As these oceans over North America began to recede into what is now the South Pacific, lush jungles- giant ferns, massive trees, an explosion of all kinds of great and huge tropical plants began to thrive, and the dinosaurs lived among them. As they and the plants died, great deepening piles of rotting animal and plant flesh accumulated. In many areas of the world, those garbage piles, under ever-increasing pressure, became coal deposits; in other areas, and we’re sitting on a massive one, they became shale and oil.
But then something happened in this dinosaur and ammonite Garden of Eden. An asteroid about the size of Rhode Island smashed into the ocean about 1200 miles from here. What is now known as the Gulf of Mexico, was first an explosion that sent enough debris and water into the air to envelope Earth in a dirty cloud for many years. long enough for all of the dinosaurs, except the very smallest ones, and for all of the ammonites to die. We know why the dinosaurs died- they either choked on the dirty air or they died because much of their plant food died when it couldn’t get enough sun. But we can only guess at why the fragile ammonites died worldwide. One theory is that the waters became too acidic for them.
Anyway, a lot of that dirt from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico ended up here, as it rained back down here on top of the dead ammonites, covering the vast pools of oil and hills of shale, eventually to be covered by the growth of bluegrass and other prairie grasses and grains.
One other very important benefit, besides oil, of the dinosaurs dying off is that the many tiny mammals which had begun making appearances around the world had the opportunity now not to be eaten. And that’s why we’re sitting here today. And why we’re sitting here holding ammonite fossils. All of us- ammonites and humans alike- have spent a loooong time, and a very complicated route, getting here today, and that’s what I want to talk a little more about this morning.
Ten times 350 million years ago, the birthday of these ammonites- that’s 3.5 billion years ago- and the Earth was still cooling off, from it’s 10 billion year history before that of being a mass of burning hydrogen- goodness gracious, a great ball of fire that eventually cooled off and became rock.
Let me say all of this another more familiar way:
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 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.
9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning--the third day...
20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fifth day.
Two stories about the same event. One was expressed in the best scientifically verifiable way I can muster, given my own scientifically limited vocabulary. And the other, the better known one, was expressed poetically, mythically, liturgically, as a prelude to the ancient story of the Hebrew tribes.
In the first one, I left out all references to the Cambrian and Paleozoic Ages, and the very important Carboniferous Period. I did not reference at all the various radioactive carbon dating methods and other radiometric methods that allow us to know when these events occurred, and how old these fossils are. I left those things out because I figured a few of you might be as confused by that jargon as I am.
In the second story- the Genesis story- whether you believe it was written by God himself, related by Moses, or gathered together from the oral tradition by several priests with the ability to write, the same thing is happening. The audience for these words was being considered. A nomadic tribe of people, all of them illiterate, with the mud of Egypt still drying under their fingernails- what chance would there possibly have been for them to understand any but the most basic language about where they had come from, and how?
Evolution is not merely a theory, it is the central theory around which all of science has been gathering since Darwin first wrote down, in a readable way 150 years ago, what had been thought about and talked about since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. The theory of evolution is not yet a complete theory; there are still many holes of understanding in it, just as there are huge holes in the various theories of gravity, the reality of which everyone accepts, because we live inside of it. But why and how gravity works, is not yet fully known.
Nor do we understand exactly how bacteria, throbbing with life, came to be, even though we do know that the waste from their munching of the rocks and of the sun’s photons produced the first oxygen on earth and gave that bacteria the ability to become lichens and fungus and which became gradually, over those 100s of millions of years, sharks, palm trees, and ammorites. We don’t know exactly, but we learn bits and pieces every year.
Those who fear evolutionary theory point to those holes in our knowledge- an easy thing to do because there are many of them. But to do so, they must ignore some pretty significant truths, many of which have been arrived at and are being arrived at in our own lifetimes; DNA, for instance, those miles long strands of information packed into every one of our cells- half from our mom, half from our dad. Not only does DNA tell us about the inherited color of our hair, but it also tells us that we share the gift of life- the same gift of life- with all living creatures. When the mushrooms pop up in our yards this spring, remember that we- humans- share 78% of the same DNA with them. When those of you who ride horses next get on the back of one, remember that you and that horse share over 93% of your biological substance with each other.
Those scientific facts affirm for me the truth, said in another way, of Genesis 2:7: “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” What we all have in common- all of us, every living thing- is that dust, that molten starstuff, those eroded rocks of 10 billion years ago, that cooled off hydrogen which began it’s explosive journey from the beginnings of all we know 14.6 billion years ago.
Those who fear our relationship with mushrooms and horses are attempting, sometimes through legal coercion, to keep God in a humanly understandable box. And that leads to real problems. I talked to a woman in Dallas once who said she preferred the 7 day creation story because it was “easier to explain to her children.” I listened to a preacher, also in Dallas, who I admired greatly until that moment, when he said that Satan was responsible for burying all those dinosaur bones in order to confuse Christians.
As I said last week, when we use the Bible as a stopping point in our understanding of God and God’s Creation, we cut ourselves off, sometimes in very foolish ways, from experiencing the incredible grandeur of God’s Continuing Creation. If we close our eyes and ears to the colors and the music of God’s ever-moving presence in the universe, then we are participating actively in the turning of this book (the Bible) into pages full of flat, dead ink.
Here’s what I think, four things:
1. Science and spirituality, or religion, are not two separate things. Religion simply asks, “Why?” Science simply asks, “How?” Those who oppose certain areas of scientific inquiry often call such inquiry a conspiracy against their faith. But if one reads any of the scientific journals, they would see that scientists fuss and fight with each other over what they have published more than junior high girls fuss and fight over boyfriends. But the evidence of evolution is so overwhelming, despite the holes, that even the strangest of scientific bedfellows agree on its principles. The religionists accuse scientists of hijacking the Truth. But that is wrong. Science, simply and elegantly, defines a way of knowing.
2. The greatest gift humans have been given is this: for the first time in the 14.6 billion year history of the Universe, the Universe now has the ability to reflect upon itself. Through us- through our eyes and ears, through our ability to imagine then build the polished lenses of telescopes and microscopes, and then imagine and send those lenses into orbit around distant planets or on trajectories toward other galaxies- through us, the universe can now begin to think about and understand itself. We can reflect on the meaning of dying stars in the cosmos which cause the birth of yet more stars. We can understand poetically, mythically, then factually, something about the movement of God through time, and begin to do what we can to cooperate and harmonize with that movement. Here’s what I mean by that:
3. We can believe that every inch of the ground upon which we live, and every living creature we live with, is ours to exploit. Or, we can cooperate with the billions of years of life yet to be lived on this place. The study of evolution has revealed, in our lifetimes, the interdependence of all things, and the need for cooperation on larger and wider scales. We didn’t know the extent of that need even 150 years ago, when our pioneering ancestors shot every passenger pigeon out of the sky and almost did in the buffalo and the indigenous people who already lived here. We have, to our great credit, stopped oohing and awwing over the skins of endangered animals draped around our shoulders. We have stopped dumping the ancient saltwater from oil well drillings onto fertile prairie land. At the same time, we have yet to fully realize- as a species- the dangerous nature of our prolific breeding habits and our life-ending rush to deforest the rain forests of the world.
Those are a few examples- good and bad- of the vital work which lays ahead for every young person in here. And they need good educations to that- educations not inflicted upon them by popular political movements, but educations which unleash and inspire the God-imaged brains God has enabled to evolve in each of them. And that responsibility will lie not just with our American children, but every child in the world. We must also be doing what we can for them as well. Examples: The price of an Ipod will keep a kid in Thailand in school for two years. The cost of one movie ticket will keep a child in Zaire in school for six months. Those facts, among many, demand changes in attitudes which I think our children will have a much greater capacity for than we do. If we allow them to.
4. Understanding evolution- or, at least, beginning to understand evolution, has for me, deepened my relationship with God. I better understand that I share something of his Image- we all do- in our ability to Create, cooperate, and be in community not only with each other but with the universe and every single thing in it. But I also understand that I must never, ever try to re-create God in my image. God is not a projection of my political beliefs, my selfish economic desires, or of my limited intellectual abilities. When I make God into any or all of those things, then I am not serving God; I am standing in the way of God’s breath moving in time, and of God’s Continuing Creation of all that is.
Closed minds do not protect God. God will be God no matter how angry we get at each other, or how stubborn we are about cooperating with each other. When we live in cooperation with the movement of God through our lives and through the universe, we can live in happiness and satisfaction. When we are living outside the rhythms and harmonies of God, we suffer, as individuals, and as a species, and take many other species down with us.
On the Sunday before his death, Jesus came into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and the crowds went wild, cheering and praising the Messiah. The soldiers warned Jesus about the noise and fanfare. “Get these people to shut up!” he was told.
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “if they keep quiet, then the stones will cry out.”
I maintain that that is exactly what these ammonites, these tiny little 350 million year old stones are doing today, in our lifetimes- crying out, affirming the ways of God in the universe, and helping us all to better understand, and praise, and live in the movement of the God of all Creation.
