Evolution and Religion: Friends, not Enemies

The Traditional Perspective: Evolution as the Enemy of Religion

Traditionally, religion and evolution seem to have been locked in a perpetual battle. From the early years of Darwin’s Origin of Species, to the infamous and nationally covered Scopes monkey trial, right up to the current “Creation Science” movement, believers (mostly, although not exclusively, Christian evangelical fundamentalists) have characterized belief in evolution as incompatible with belief in God, and especially with belief in God as understood by evangelicals.  Often this battle is situated in the larger context of a literalist interpretation of the Bible: since the theory of evolution offers an account of the origin of the human (and other) species that is different from the Genesis account of direct creation by an act of a transcendent God, to accept the truth of evolution necessarily implies the rejection of the infallible authority of the Bible, and for many Christians that is unacceptable.

Of course, not all Christians are fundamentalists or Biblical literalists, and there are many who identify as Christians and accept the theory of evolution (of particular note, for example, was the French priest/paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose work attempted to present a complete reconciliation of religion and evolution. His work will be examined here in a later post). Nonetheless, it’s fair to say that the dominant factor in the religion-evolution relationship over the past century and longer, has been the evangelical/fundamentalist interpretation of that relationship, according to which Christian faith requires a literal interpretation of the Bible which necessarily leads to a rejection of evolution.

But there is a much different way to think about the relationship between religion and evolution!

An Alternative Perspective: Evolution as the Source of Religion

Many religions understand the origin of their tradition to be the result of a divine act of top-down revelation, where a transcendent divine being communicates a revelation to humanity, with that revelation (Torah, Bible, Qur’an, Veda, etc.) functioning as the origin and foundation of their religion.
But let’s consider another account of how religion might have emerged, doing so from an evolutionary perspective that does not in any way deny the reality of a spiritual dimension but at the same time eliminates the conflict between religion and evolution.

To begin, let’s look at the big picture of evolution – the really big picture, sometimes referred to as Big History:
The Universe originated approximately 13.7 billion years ago with a singularity in which space/time/energy first came into existence – the Big Bang. The subsequent development of the Universe has been one in which entities of increasing complexity evolved: from the primal energy to elementary particles to protons and neutrons to simple atoms to stars to galaxies. Collapsing stars, or supernova, in these early galaxies led to explosions which resulted in more complex elements and complex structures which became our solar systems, in which complex bodies composed of various elements orbited around a central star. In one such galaxy, this included the planet on which we reside, Earth. The evolution of increasingly complex structures continued on Earth, which was positioned in just the right location for the eventual emergence of cells, then multi-cellular organisms, then complex living species (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals), eventually leading to humans.

And here is where things get really interesting! Humans continued to evolve, as individuals and as a group, and in a variety of ways: socially, culturally, psychologically, economically, politically, etc.
For our purposes, though, the most important element of the ongoing evolution of humans was the evolution of human consciousness, or the capacity to perceive and be aware of increasingly fuller aspects of reality. Early humans, like the mammals which they evolved from, had the capacity for sensory experience: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, etc. But over time, human consciousness developed to a point which exceeded that of previous species, in that humans developed the capacity to perceive or sense (however dimly) the existence of what we might call super-sensory aspects of reality. At some point, probably more than 40,000 years ago, humans acquired a sense that there was something more than that which they could perceive through the ordinary five senses, something that (to use a word that makes sense to us today but of course would have been meaningless at the time) transcended the more common everyday dimension of stuff. From this point onward, humans differed from all other living creatures in the sense that, in addition to sensory experience of stuff, humans had the capacity to experience or sense (again, however dimly), the presence of “something more” which could not be directly seen, touched, etc., but which was nonetheless part of what is real.

In some ways, this unique human characteristic was a matter of recognizing abstractions: concepts such as number, time, space, direction, etc. In other words, the capacity of the human mind clearly evolved or grew over time: the earliest humans could not use written and oral symbols to communicate, which is to say that early human consciousness did not include abstract thinking; eventually, of course, humans not only developed this capacity but enlarged and refined it into complex languages capable of communicating subtle internal mental and emotional perceptions and states.

But for our purposes, the most unique aspect of this evolving human sense of the nature of reality was the recognition of something that existed that was qualitatively different from anything that was experienced in the realm of time, space, matter, form, etc. Early humans had the capacity to perceive and experience that aspect of reality that was available through sensory experience: that which could be seen, touched, smelled, etc. But at some point in the evolution of human consciousness, our species acquired the capacity to sense that there was, so to speak, a supersensory aspect of reality, something which really existed, but was not directly perceived in the same manner as most aspects of the sensory realm. Humans acquired, however dimly and however poorly and variously articulated, a sense of a spiritual dimension, or the presence of the sacred as a part of reality. So again, using language that makes sense to us today, we could say that human consciousness evolved to the point that humans acquired the ability to sense the presence of Spirit: humans were the first species to acquire the capacity to sense the existence of a spiritual dimension of the Cosmos, and thus we have the birth of religion, or the attempt to articulate, make sense of, and respond to, the intuitive awareness of the spiritual dimension of the Cosmos. 

Of course, how and when this happened is and will remain a mystery. Sceptics are fond of offering simplistic reductionist explanations of the origin of religion (the sociological necessity to maintain order in increasingly large settlements, a psychological defense mechanism against the fear of death, the error of confusing dream reality with external reality, and so on), but even those reductionist explanations assume the existence of a human capacity to posit the presence of something that is not present to ordinary sensory experience. Yes, it clearly is the case that in human communities with a belief in supernatural beings, that religious belief system was used to encourage pro-social behavior and discourage anti-social behavior, but that constitutes a use of religion, not its origin. It does not account for the origin of the idea – apparently not found in any other living organism on Earth – that there exists a dimension of reality that is different from the space/time/matter/energy dimension that constitutes the physical universe and can be perceived through sensory experience.

Where did that human awareness of Spirit come from? At what point in the evolution of the species and the ongoing development of the brain did the awareness of Spirit become possible? How did early humans deal with that budding spiritual awareness, an awareness that would have preceded the subsequent explosion of religious ideas and practices that claimed to explain that primal awareness of Spirit?

Unfortunately, the answers to such questions are lost to history, but we can, in a very general sense, trace the emergence and development of the human awareness of Spirit, as over time it has been manifested in the various forms of religious belief and practice: animism, polytheism, monotheism, non-dualism, pantheism, deism, etc., each of which gets expressed and elaborated on in multiple forms in different cultures over different time periods.

But back to the larger point: in this account of the origin of religion, there is no conflict between religion and evolution. Quite to the contrary, evolution is seen as the process through which this Universe develops an entity (humans) with the capacity to intuit the presence of Spirit. If there is no evolution of the human species and no evolution of consciousness, there is no evolution of the sense of Spirit, and hence there is no religion: from that point of view, religion is indebted to, rather than in conflict with, evolution.

This interpretation of the origin of religion sees religion not as the product of a discrete top-down divine revelation but rather as the product of a natural process occurring in the Universe that has led to the emergence of an entity (homo sapiens) that has the evolved capacity to sense the presence of Spirit, the presence of a very real non-material dimension of the Cosmos.

Of course, this evolutionary model of religion (which we will simply refer to as evolutionary religion) will not likely be embraced by traditional fundamentalist theists who wish to interpret ancient sacred texts in an infallible, literalist style. But for those who bring an open mind to the issue, we believe that evolutionary religion provides an opportunity for the contemporary citizen to be a believer without sacrificing their intellectual integrity. One can accept all that scientific knowledge has to offer, including the evolution of the Cosmos, and still assert the reality of Spirit.
 
And the Future Evolution of Religion?

As I argue in Thinking about Religion in the 21st Century: A New Guide for the Perplexed, we appear to be in the midst of a major transitional period from the religions of the past 2500 years to something new. All of the major existing world religions emerged during a period known as the Axial Age, and they have flourished and developed in various expressions across the globe for over two millennia. But there is good reason to believe that their influence is waning: the traditional Axial Age religions simply do not resonate with humans who are fully informed by a 21st century historical, scientific, and multi-cultural sensibility, and we see the consequences of this in the closing of churches, the rise of secularism, the growth of the “spiritual but not religious” identification, and just a widespread general disinterest in religion.
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Of course, new spiritual traditions will eventually emerge to replace the declining Axial Age religions, but here in the early 21st century we are in the awkward moment where post-Axial, evolutionary religion has not yet evolved into something recognizable and workable. Suggestions regarding what a post-Axial religion might look like have been offered in a previous blog (see Where We are Headed: The Second Axial Age and Post-Axial Religion, parts 1 through 6 ) and the nature of post-Axial religion is explored in detail in the second part of Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century.  But the details of what the “religions of the future” will look like are difficult to foresee, especially in light of the likely transformation of the human species itself, as technology leads to the transition from human to post-human. But whatever the post-human world turns out to be like, it certainly will include religion and spirituality, and in a manner that is fully reconciled with science and evolution.