Darwin Day
Monday, February 12, 2007
Wired news informs me that today, February 12th, is Darwin Day, an international celebration of "Darwin, science and humanity". Cool. Even secular humanists, it seems, need to celebrate their beliefs (or lack thereof) in a formal way.
This year marks the fourth celebration of Darwin Day, and I celebrated by attending morning service at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, on Chestnut street, this past Sunday (Feb. 4th). Actually, that makes it sound like I went there specifically to celebrate Darwin day, which isn't completely true. What actually happened is that I noticed the message board outside announcing "Darwin's Religion" as the title for the February 4th service. Not knowing what Unitarians are (call me ignorant, but it's hard to deny there are a lot of "flavours" of Christianity out there and it's hard to keep up), I went there thinking this would be yet another misguided attack on Darwinism by the fretful pious masses.
Turns out Unitarians are far from fretful. Now, anyone who knows me would know that I'm not confrontational about my beliefs (well, not anymore at least). I didn't go to that service looking to force a collision between faith and science; I went with the honest intent of observing quietly, to try to understand something of what makes this topic so unsettling for so many people. What I encountered couldn't have caught me more off-guard.
The service began with a recitation of the church's mission statement:
And right there is when things started to get strange for me. This is a perfectly good mission statement--in point of fact, it sounds like something we should all hold ourselves up to. I suppose what perplexed me was the odd juxtaposition of religious imagery, ritual and ceremonial pomp with resolutely secular concepts. I was happy to see there are people devoted to celebrating knowledge without bias; I suppose I just never expected such people to be of the churchgoing type.
But it's hard to deny the importance of ritual. I would surmise that, for most people nowadays, religious service has a greater purpose as a time for gathering and reflexion, for the reassertion of one's beliefs as part of a broader community. The people gathered in that church that Sunday were there to commune with one another, not in celebration of their exclusion from everyone else, but in celebration of their kinship with one another.
And, on this day, it meant celebrating Darwin Day (from whence the title "Darwin's Religion") by pausing to think about the importance of knowledge and scientific inquiry. So, no duelling worldviews on this day. Just nice, smiling people who came together to celebrate Darwin's legacy. What made it unsettling for me was mostly that it caught me off guard. To have strangers welcome you and encourage you to sit, sing and shake hands with other strangers is a little odd when you've come to see all kind and smiling strangers as salespeople of some sort.
But there was no selling on this day. So, happy Darwin Day everyone!
This year marks the fourth celebration of Darwin Day, and I celebrated by attending morning service at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, on Chestnut street, this past Sunday (Feb. 4th). Actually, that makes it sound like I went there specifically to celebrate Darwin day, which isn't completely true. What actually happened is that I noticed the message board outside announcing "Darwin's Religion" as the title for the February 4th service. Not knowing what Unitarians are (call me ignorant, but it's hard to deny there are a lot of "flavours" of Christianity out there and it's hard to keep up), I went there thinking this would be yet another misguided attack on Darwinism by the fretful pious masses.Turns out Unitarians are far from fretful. Now, anyone who knows me would know that I'm not confrontational about my beliefs (well, not anymore at least). I didn't go to that service looking to force a collision between faith and science; I went with the honest intent of observing quietly, to try to understand something of what makes this topic so unsettling for so many people. What I encountered couldn't have caught me more off-guard.
The service began with a recitation of the church's mission statement:
Our Mission Statement:
We are an intentionally diverse religious community
Inspired by our historic urban ministry.
We seek to lead meaningful lives,
To love one another without prejudice,
And to build a just and sustainable world.
And right there is when things started to get strange for me. This is a perfectly good mission statement--in point of fact, it sounds like something we should all hold ourselves up to. I suppose what perplexed me was the odd juxtaposition of religious imagery, ritual and ceremonial pomp with resolutely secular concepts. I was happy to see there are people devoted to celebrating knowledge without bias; I suppose I just never expected such people to be of the churchgoing type.
But it's hard to deny the importance of ritual. I would surmise that, for most people nowadays, religious service has a greater purpose as a time for gathering and reflexion, for the reassertion of one's beliefs as part of a broader community. The people gathered in that church that Sunday were there to commune with one another, not in celebration of their exclusion from everyone else, but in celebration of their kinship with one another.
And, on this day, it meant celebrating Darwin Day (from whence the title "Darwin's Religion") by pausing to think about the importance of knowledge and scientific inquiry. So, no duelling worldviews on this day. Just nice, smiling people who came together to celebrate Darwin's legacy. What made it unsettling for me was mostly that it caught me off guard. To have strangers welcome you and encourage you to sit, sing and shake hands with other strangers is a little odd when you've come to see all kind and smiling strangers as salespeople of some sort.
But there was no selling on this day. So, happy Darwin Day everyone!