For Sunday, Feb 9, 2025
The UU Congregation of Lakeland, Florida, of which I am a part, put together a service this week to commemorate two Unitarian friends from the Nineteenth Century whose birthdays fell in February. Specifically, they were Fannie Barrier Williams and Charles Darwin. Darwin’s 216th birthday falls on Feb 12 this year.
I was eager to take part in that service as I’ve had a keen interest in the subject of Darwin and Evolution in general since high school. A part of that for me was that Darwin and his horrible, heretical and very, very bad “theory” were mightily condemned from every corner of the fundamentalist universe when I was a young Fundie boy growing up in Central Florida.
Although I took a lot of that in during my formative years, I wasn’t fully convinced and took seriously the things I learned in science classes, both in High School and later in college.
In my college years, the process of questioning some of the things I had been exposed to as a younger fellow began to pick up speed. The way that worked out for me, in a practical way, is that I stopped trying to harmonize the things I believed to be true about theology and faith on the one hand with the things I believed to be true about science and how we “got here” on the other.
Finding the UU Church and way of living in the early ‘90s was such a good thing for me in so many ways and was a natural step as I had parted ways approximately 12 years before with the folks in my Fundie/Evangelical churches who believed that the bible was true and authoritative for a true believer in every area of life, including science.
Now I should make it clear that I have no science cred, but I’m a serious lover of science, whether it’s about space, exploring the cosmos, what’s happening to our climate or how on Earth—literally—how on Earth did we get here? We, meaning humans, but all of those other species, too? All of that is huge for me, though it’s not my field, but I think we’d all agree that there’s nothing more important than all of that “stuff”.
There are two things about Darwin and evolution writ large that are important enough to me that I want to highlight them. There are two thoughts that tend to come up often with other non-scientists like me who also appreciate how important that stuff is but don’t have a thorough grounding in the subject. One might think of these as myths or misunderstandings regarding evolution or just specifics that aren’t very widely grasped or understood by everyday lay folk like me. Meaning non-scientists.
There is a myth that Darwin postulated that humans descended from monkeys or apes. And that’s not so. Evolution posits that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor, most likely sometime in the Miocene Epoch, between 5 and 23 million years ago.
My way of putting that into lay person’s terms would be to say that evolutionary science isn’t trying to tell us that our Mothers were Gorillas but that we humans and Gorillas are cousins, that we evolved, independently and in different specific ways, from a common primate ancestor. The thought of being the thirty-millionth cousin to Gertie Gorilla does not bother me in the least.
Another aspect of evolution which is not always well understood is how we lay folk often conflate the ideas or concepts of survival of the fittest with survival of the strongest. That universal aphorism or buzz phrase “only the strong survive” is always lingering there in the background.
By the way, “Survival of the fittest” was actually a phrase first used by Herbert Spencer. Spencer, a Nineteenth-Century economist, was trying to equate Darwin’s natural selection theory to economic theory. Darwin liked Spencer’s use of that specific phrase and used it later, including in his landmark tome On the Origin of Species, starting with the 5th edition.
In my view, adaptability is key! So much depends on the organism or the critter’s fitness or suitability to its environment. An example of being “fit” to adapt and survive and therefore be able to successfully pass on your genetic material–without necessarily being the strongest or “King of the Hill”–can be found in this excerpt from writer Thomas DeMichele on the site fact/myth.com:
DeMichele writes: “All but one species of mole rats lives and feeds underground to avoid predators; given this, mole rats are typically small. To be the fittest mole rat you have to either be small enough to fit in the hole or have another solution to vulnerability on the surface of the ground.
The Big-headed Mole Rat tunnels like other mole rats, but actually eats and lives above ground. How does it not get eaten? It partners with a tiny bird (the moorland chat) that warns the mole rat when the big-headed mole rat’s main predator, Ethiopian wolves, are near. In return, the big-headed mole rat digs up grubs for the bird.
To be fair, the mole rat also has some pretty big teeth that can hurt the wolf, so its size and strength aren’t totally irrelevant. Still the point is clear. While most moles survive by being small; the big ones survive primarily through intelligence and teamwork. Being strong is at best a secondary helper trait in the case of the big-headed mole rat.”
So as far as how we—and all those other critters–got here, it’s more about fitness, suitability and being adaptable as opposed to merely having extraordinary or overpowering strength. In evolution, strength counts, it’s not irrelevant. But adaptability and cooperation—as we see here with the Big-Headed Mole Rat and his avian BFF, the Moorland Chat—can put one in a good position to live, thrive and survive.
Is it a big deal to take a few minutes today to think about such things? To think about some of the things we know because Darwin and other scientists and students of Nature got the ball rolling in the mid 19th Century?
Yes, it’s a very big deal. For quite a few years now, we have been entering a time of rapid change in our society and—as you no doubt know—in every corner of the Earth.
A lot of these changes are huge and are very, very stressing. It goes far beyond window dressing or mere preferences and extends to things that can be life-changing and—quite literally–matters of life and death for some. Life and death for some species, some fellow travelers on our Planet. And, the health and vitality and the very survival of some marginalized communities in the human family could very well be at stake.
I am in no way pretending to lay before you a thorough outline of where we are as we see these changes coming. Much less to offer comprehensive solutions or strategies of where we go from here.
But I do know that the traits and characteristics and strategies that got our species this far will be key going forward. Strength is not irrelevant. It’s a good trait, what’s called an evolutionarily-positive trait. There will be times when we’ll have to foster our strength, build or strength, gather our strength. And share our strength. There are many days where I have no strength left; I know I have plenty of company when I say that. And it will be so key in those times to draw strength from one another.
And, make no mistake, there will be times we’ll need that mutual strength because we’ll have to stand and fight! We must stand firm on our UU Principles, including the worth and dignity of every human person and the right of people to use the democratic process in matters that affect them.
But let’s also remember that sharing, communication, cooperation and adapting suit us well and will also be essential as we move through the upheaval and rapid changes that are coming at us today at this point in the evolution of humanity and human society.
Strength, fitness, solidarity, cooperation and adaptability need to be tools in your bag as we move forward together through these turbulent, troubling times.
The quotation above from Mr. DeMichele can be found here: Survival of the Fittest, Only the Strong Survive – Fact or Myth?
© 2025 Benjamin Lawrence Basile
The Fellowship of St Francis 