Sunday, May 11, 2025, reading followed by the sermon by Rev. F. Vernon Wright V
Reading
Darwin recognized that evolution is fundamentally about “survival of the adequate.” It’s not about “survival of the fittest,” despite this becoming a popular (but entirely incorrect) summary of how evolution works. To persist indefinitely in a changing world, being fit (surviving and reproducing) is all that is required, not being the fittest. Understanding this seemingly subtle difference in what Darwin said — “survival of the fit” — versus what evolutionary theory became — “survival of the fittest” — has some profound implications for how we view the biosphere and its ability to cope with change.
In short, it allows us to see that there are vast amounts of evolutionary potential stored in living organisms and the ecosystems they form, and that it is this potential that fuels life’s capacity to persist indefinitely. This insight produces a clear message: To best ensure our future, we must identify and preserve as much evolutionary potential as possible. And to live sustainably, we must use this potential wisely and adopt socioeconomic systems that better mimic the biological systems that produce it.
Salvatore J. Agosta, Virginia Commonwealth University, Major Metaphors for Evolution Darwinism Then and Now https://www.news.vcu.edu/article/Survival_of_the_fit_A_VCU_professors_new_book_calls_for_a_shift#:~:text=Darwin recognized that evolution is,Could you elaborate on that?
Sermon: The Nature of Nurture: Inter-being and Biology
Happy mothers day everyone! For most of us, this is the time of the year when we give thanks to those who both natured and nurtured us. By natured, I speak of the genetics from my mom and dad that expressed themselves uniquely in me. By nurtured I refer to the particular experiences, conditioning and education that my parents and our society as a whole in the the seventies and eighties gave to me. Today though, I want to suggest that which ultimately nurtures us, is nature herself. I want to lift up not only our own personal mothers but mother nature herself. I hope to be able to elevate one of our new values voted on in last years general assembly, how all things are interconnected in love.
In the late eighties and early nineties, biologists were just discovering how nurturing can actually switch genes on or off- in other words the way one is raised can to some degree influence how our genetics gets expressed. Studies of twins who were separated at birth shed light on that. People were beginning to develop a keener understanding on how a society centered on justice equality and healthy choices might actually benefit everyone and bring out the best of humankind. This was the realm of sociology and social biology.
Studies of nature, however, seemed to be of a different order back then. Everything was dominated by a kind of hyper-masculine cold eyed realism that would say things like this: “The life of animals is brutish and short!” At least that is what my biologist teacher on the Maasai Mara said to us in the truck when we witnessed a lioness kill a wildebeest, eye the male lion waltzing over to steal her kill and she straight away ripped off the wildebeest’s scrotal sack before trotting off to her pride of cubs with the whole package dangling from her mouth!
Yes there’s much about nature that is not pleasant or seeming to be fair, but as a whole we are learning more and more just how interconnected all life is. Though brutal sometimes, the way one life form relates to another is so closely balanced it gets eerie. Consider the way a forest might depend on the sea nitrogen from salmon ingested by a bear hundreds of miles upstream. The trees flourish and provide nuts and shelter for a host of other animals. Consider the role a sea otter plays off the coastal waters of California: The otter eats the urchins on the sea floor. Urchins eat kelp. If too many urchins are around the kelp forest can’t grow. With the sea otters though, the kelp forests thrive and this supports hundreds of other species. When humans stopped hunting sea otters for their fur, ecosystems off the shores of California began to thrive. When ecosystems began to thrive, people who made a living from the sea also began to thrive.
Have you ever hear of the term “Survival of the fittest”? Who said that? Was it Charles Darwin? No, actually that was a term coined by the first generation of interpreters of Darwin’s work, Herbert Spencer. He used this term, as a justification for scientific racism, utilized for the destruction of “inferior races” and as a justification for chattel slavery. What Darwin actually said is that survival of a species depends not on domination or perfection but on the ability to fit into an ecosystem.
What does that mean for us? Well, our survival will depend on how well we fit into the ecosystem. Can we survive if we destroy all the ecosystems around us? Hell no! The better we fit into our ecosystem and contribute to the flourishing of ecosystems the better off we will be. Nature nurtures us. Our brains have developed to survive yes, but also to contribute to the flourishing of other species in a network.
One of the assaults of this current administration has been the attempted dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is the only real agency that has the power to check businesses who’s reckless behavior endangers ecosystems or even outright poisons the public. It’s a full scale war on nature really. And I could go on, but why bother. You know it all already.
Here’s the deal. Through thousands of years of this game of civilization we are all playing, we created a world view that put the human being at the center of creation, in which the power of the entire universe took on human form, i.e. Jesus the second person of the Trinity. And though we could have chosen the metaphor of the master gardener found in Genesis Two, we chose the metaphor of dominion in Genesis One- because that is what John Locke the father of Capitalism chose. And now we are so programed, most people assume that he (and I do really mean he) who controls the most of nature is deserving of dominion. Trump assumes this anyway.
But we all know better now. Modern biology knows that all beings, participate in an extremely delicate balance. We know Charles Darwin meant survival of the fit, not survival of the fittest. Even Christians in the know realize that this is a problematic view point and talk about the gardener metaphor in Genesis Two instead of the dominion metaphor in Genesis One.
Consciousness has shifted. Everyone here in this room has shifted. Tens of millions of people have shifted. And I’m sure today that we will continue to inspire others to shift as well. And people who want to continue to destroy Mother Nature are scared- that is why they are waging war on science or any religious belief that opposes them.
Mother Earth is such an important concept. The ancient Greek’s saw the Goddess Gia, the Algonquin’s saw her as Nokomis- the grandmother. The Inca saw her as Pacha Mamma. The Unitarian Transcendentalist saw nature as the ultimate truth and guide. We all come from human mothers sure, but nature is the ultimate mother. Nature is the ultimate nurture. It gave a place for our species to survive and thrive, but for us to continue to do, we are going to have to be more like the sea otters helping the kelp forests thrive and less like the sea urchins destroying the kelp forests.
Happy Mothers Day everyone! And especially to the mothers!…. But also happy mother earth day! Happy mother’s day to the mother of creation, from which we live, not only as individuals but as the species, homo Sapiens! May we recognize how delicately interconnected all life is on this planet. May we be devoted to loving it and learning from it. Blessed be everybody, blessed be!
