[Oe List ...] 8/20/09: Spong: The Study of Life, Part 4: Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands

Thu Aug 20 16:42:09 CDT 2009

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Eternal Life : A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell
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 Library Journal Says:
"Spong, the controversial retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, may rightly be considered the bellwether of the most advanced opinions in theology that still cling to a nominal Christian identity. With subtlety and complexity, Spong promotes an idea of an ongoing existence beyond our physicality, one that entirely supercedes "religious" notions of Heaven or Hell and even conventional notions of God. For conservative Christians, Spong's views are heretical; for many other readers, Christian and non-Christian, Spong's writing here as elsewhere is intelligent, engaged, comforting, and uplifting. 
VERDICT: Spong's thought and theology are crucial stimulants for every thinking Christian; an important book." 
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Thursday August 20, 2009 

The Study of Life, Part 4
Tracing the Story of Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands

Still pursuing the meaning of life as the necessary prerequisite for raising the question of what might lie beyond life, we left the Amazon Rainforest and made our way by air from Quito through Ecuador's major port and biggest city, Guayaquil, to the sole airport in 
the Galapagos on the island named Baltra. This is the principal gateway into this mysterious area, which has been called everything from "the closest thing to hell on earth" to the "Garden of Eden." 
These islands are a series of land masses, created by volcanic eruptions in what is called the "hot spot" of the Galapagos. The oldest island in this chain is 6.5 million years old, while the youngest is no more than 300,000 years old. These islands drift to the east as if on a slow-moving conveyor belt at the rate of about three inches a year. Given their ages, that can constitute significant distances. The oldest island, for example, has drifted 378 miles from its place of birth, while the youngest has moved only 21 miles. So the further east-southeast the islands of this chain are, the older they are. The effects of their volcanic birth are everywhere, with black ash and rolls of spewing lava, now hardened but quite visible. Each island's vegetation reflects its age. The earliest form of vegetation is normally the volcanic cactus. That is followed by more sustainable vegetation as hundreds of thousands of years pass. The animate life native here is limited to sea birds and various reptiles, the best known of which are the giant tortoises and the iguanas. Mammals, which are by nature late developing, are indigenous to this land only in the form of sea lions and bats. The Galapagos' sea lions have been traced to the sea lions of California, while bats have amazingly long navigational abilities and can
 come from almost anywhere. The scarcity of fresh water makes other forms of mammalian life all but impossible. 
These islands were first discovered by fishermen in the 16th century and were later used by pirates, lying in wait for galleons loaded with Inca gold and other prizes of the new world. The pirates introduced other forms of life here, such as goats, so that they would have a fresh supply of meat waiting for them on future voyages. Remarkably, these goats proved to be sufficiently hardy to survive on the slight moisture they found in plants and the occasional rainfall, while at the same time they demonstrated one of Darwin's principles by adapting their bodies to the ability to drink brackish salt water that was available in great supply. A stop here in 1835 by the HMS Beagle, captained by Robert Fitzroy and having on board serving as the "naturalist" a young man in his mid-twenties named Charles Robert Darwin, brought change not just to the Galapagos, but to the face of human history. The voyage of the Beagle lasted five years, from 1831 to1836, but the only time spent in the Galapagos was between September 5 and October 7 of the year 1835. Of that five-week time span Darwin actually spent only 19 days on land. 
In that limited time, however, Darwin visited every island on which he could get ashore and immediately became aware of their relatively recent origins and even of the gaps of time between each island, small by geological standards but significant in terms of the development=2
0of life forms. Everywhere he went, he collected specimens for his study. The differences among the same species of the finch provided Darwin with what was to be an invaluable clue that would underlie his theory, namely that various forms of life were not immutable, but were in fact always changing. Indeed these changes could be so total, he found, that given the necessary time, new species could actually develop. Just as the various islands of the Galapagos chain floated eastward over time, so the life forms on each island were distinct as they adapted to the different environment and resources available on each island. Darwin thus broke two "established" conclusions present in the religious world view of his day. One was that the age of this20planet Earth was far older than the 6000 or so years postulated by Irish Bishop James Ussher who, from his biblical sources dated the birth of this Earth in 4004 BCE. The second was the idea firmly stated in the creation story that God created each species "after its kind" and that there was therefore no changing or evolving after the creation. 
Darwin himself did not yet embrace the real dimensions of time in the Earth's history, which we now count at 4.7 billion years. If he had, his work would have been much easier. Nor did he embrace the possibility, now well established, that our separated continents were once a contiguous land mass. This would have explained, for example, both the similarities and the differences in vegetative and animal life in Africa and
 South America. Yet even without these two dimensions of knowledge that were to come much later, his thesis was remarkably accurate. 
What, he wondered, brought about the observable changes in the various forms of life from island to island? It was in answer to that question that Darwin's real contribution came. His answer to that question would also prove to be most controversial in religious circles, for it shattered the primary concept by which human beings conceived of God. For Darwin, biological change was accomplished by natural selection. There was no place in his thinking for a divine intelligence directing the process. 
The clue for this truth for Darwin was seen in the wide variety in the shape of the beaks of the finches from island to island. Since the food supply was different on each island because of its age, the finches that survived in each location had to have beaks that were well adapted to the local food supply. Over multiple generations the finches with the fittest beaks for the environment in which they lived were naturally selected for survival. 
That same principle is still observable today among the sea lions of the Galapagos. The dominant male of the sea lion colony patrols a limited stretch of the beach, preventing other male challengers to his kingdom, and thus he impregnates all of the female sea lions in that area. Regularly, the dominant sea lion fights off male challengers to maintain his position until finally a stronger one than he prevails and takes over. In this wa
y, the strongest characteristics are continually bred into the offspring. Natural selection works to foster survival adaptations. 
When Darwin left the Galapagos after this short visit, he discovered that his record-keeping was quite happenstance. Only later, by use of the notes kept by Captain Fitzroy, was Darwin able to organize each of his specimens by the island and the date on which it was obtained. Only then, when the differences on each island became visible to him, did the theory of evolution begin to take shape, since it alone made sense of the now apparent data. Natural selection emerged as the key to the theory. 
Darwin himself was shocked by his own conclusions. It was such a revo lutionary way to view life from anything supposed before. He sat on this knowledge, seeking to be certain, while constantly testing his thesis from 1836 to 1859. When he finally published his findings, he was quite aware of the challenge his ideas would bring. This had been made clear to him from two primary sources. First, there was the vigorous opposition to his conclusions on biblical grounds that came from Captain Robert Fitzroy. Second, his wife, a devoted member of the Anglican Church, made him aware of her fears. With the negativity destined to be so high, he wanted to be sure that he stood on solid ground before he put his conclusions into irrevocable print. Twenty-four years after the voyage of the Beagle and under pressure from another scientist named Alfred Russel Wallace, who was working in the same ar
ea and who might have become the one with whom evolution was identified if he had published first, Darwin finally released his book to the public in 1859 just 150 years ago and in the 50th year of his life. When this book hit the streets of London, it sold out on the first day of publication. The world would never be the same. 
Within a few weeks Darwin's theory was the subject of the historic debate between Thomas Huxley, representing Darwin, and the voice of the threatened religious establishment, Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford. This debate took place before the members of the British scientific world at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford. Though Wilberforce was, by popular acclaim, the winner of this debate, history has not treated the good bishop kindly. He is viewed today more as a buffoon than as a serious critic. When Wilberforce tried ridicule by asking Huxley whether it was on his mother's or father's side that he had descended from apes, he had stooped to the oldest trick that losers regularly employ in a debate: "If you can't deal with the message, attack the messenger." The chief result of this debate was that press coverage guaranteed that Darwin's ideas quickly entered the public's awareness and began that inevitable process of seeping into universal consciousness. Today the discovery of DNA and the subsequent recognition of the interrelatedness of all living things has fairly well clinched the argument in Darwin's favor. There is universal acceptance of his theory in intellectua
l circles. Medical science is organized on the basis of evolution. The study of genetics assumes it. The fields of biochemistry and biophysics have it as their prerequisite. Evolution has in fact won the day. Religious opposition is now little more than a minor skirmish fought on the battlefield along the major retreat routes of religious thinking. Darwin had signaled the fact that religion would have to change dramatically, perhaps even die, before human beings would understand the very meaning of life. This last possibility finally became clear to me in the writing of my new book. I discovered that I had to walk beyond religion in order to discover the meaning of life here or the hope=2 0of life hereafter. Before I could find a doorway into an understanding of life after death, I had to find my way into what Dietrich Bo nhoeffer called "Religionless Christianity." I will seek to reveal the process this book took in next week's column. 

– John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

George Williams, via the Internet, writes:

You wrote the following in your essay dated May 14, 2009: 
"Most people today still think of Joseph as a carpenter, unaware that the earliest reference in Mark, before Joseph was known in the tradition at all, portrayed Jesus alone as the carpenter, identifying him as the son of a woman." I don't ever recall seeing20this "son of a woman" passage. I did an online word search of the RSV an
d came up dry. Would it be possible to point me to the chapter and verse in which this was written?

George Williams, via the Internet, writes:

You wrote the following in your essay dated May 14, 2009: 
"Most people today still think of Joseph as a carpenter, unaware that the earliest reference in Mark, before Joseph was known in the tradition at all, portrayed Jesus alone as the carpenter, identifying him as the son of a woman." I don't ever recall seeing20this "son of a woman" passage. I did an online word search of the RSV and came up dry. Would it be possible to point me to the chapter and verse in which this was written?

Dear George,

If you look at Mark, chapter 6, verse 3, you will discover that the author says, quoting a member of the crowd speaking of Jesus: "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, Simon and Judas, and are not his sisters here with us?" and they took offence at him. 
I submit that to call Jesus "the son of Mary" is to assert that he is the son of a woman. That is, incidentally, the only time in the first gospel that the mother of Jesus is called "Mary." It is also in the first-century Jewish world an insult to refer to a grown man as the son of a woman. As a matter of fact there is no hint in Mark that the mother of Jesus was a virgin. Indeed in Mark 3:21 and 31-35, she is portrayed as thinking Jesus is "beside himself" and goes to take him away. The story of the virgin
 Mary is a ninth-decade addition to the Christian story introduced by Matthew, retold by Luke and then denied by John, who calls Jesus the "son of Joseph" on two occasions.

Thanks for writing,
John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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