396 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES!
embrace the fact that we are part of the biosphere and need to shepherd and care for this
planet before we destroy it. Many scientists and authors have written about how uplift-
ing and liberating the scientific worldview can be for humankind, especially in compari-
son to the vengeful God of the Old Testament or the hateful practices of many religions
that persecute and sometimes murder people in the name of their faith. Michael Shermer
gives a good argument for why the evolutionary and scientific worldview is not only no
threat to true religion or spirituality but actually helps us better understand our spiri-
tuality when complemented by our scientific understanding of the world. As Shermer
(2006:159–161) writes,
Does a scientific explanation for the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not.
Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive.
Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does
this in spades. I am deeply moved, for example, when I observe through my Meade
eight-inch reflecting telescope in my backyard the fuzzy little patch of light that is the
Andromeda galaxy. It is not just because it is lovely, but because I also understand
that the photons of light landing on my retina left Andromeda 2.9 million years ago,
when our ancestors were tiny-brained hominids roaming the plains of Africa. . . .
Herein lies the spiritual side of science—sciensuality, if you will pardon the awk-
ward neologism but one that echoes the sensuality of discovery. If religion and spiri-
tuality are supposed to generate awe and humility in the face of the creator, what
could be more awesome and humbling than the deep space discovered by Hubble
and the cosmologists, or the deep time discovered by Darwin and the evolutionists?
Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science
matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga
about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.In his famous television series Cosmos (1980), the late great Carl Sagan put it beautifully:The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the
cosmos stir us. There’s a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation
as of a distant memory of falling from a great height. We know we are approaching
the grandest of mysteries. . . . We’ve begun at last to wonder about our origins, star
stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms
contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at
consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps through the cosmos. Our obli-
gation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos,
ancient and vast, from which we spring.Darwin (1859) said it best in the concluding paragraph of On the Origin of Species,
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most
beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.