nurses, and now Hugo, have to make these promises? No oneâs going to pull any plug, for heavenâs sake. I wish youâd find something else to worry about. I wish youâd just concentrate on getting better.â
âIâm concentrating,â he protested. âIt isnât working.â
And then he died.
My mother wept, mostly out of hurt and frustration. The old crank, in her mind, had wasted his dying breath without ever saying how much he loved us. Nor did he leave us with a touching farewell speech. But to me he had said as much in his own peculiar way, and shown his love just as fiercely, by demonstrating how afraid he was of leaving us. In fact, I never realized how much he loved us until his deathbed scene.
My father died just after I had graduated from Columbia University and had joined the curatorial staff at the Boston Museum of Natural History. His atheism gave me the freedom to reject Christianity without struggle or pain. It was at this time, dealing with my fatherâs death, that I had a conversion of sorts myself: I realized that evolution was, in fact, my religion.
This may, perhaps, sound eccentric. Let me explain. There can be no doubt: life is a miraculous thing, and even more miraculous is human intelligence. Our world, this earth, is a surpassingly beautiful place, perfectly suited to our needs. It is
as if
the world were created for us, so perfect is it. But this is an illusion; in fact,
we
were created for the world. The world is just right for us because weâve been adapting to it for millions of years.
Love, sex, family, the pleasures of food, intellectual delight, friendship, appreciation of beauty, the pleasure of exercise andgood health, the excitement of sport and adventureâall these qualities were given to us, not by God, but by evolution.
There is a catch, however. Evolution extracts a price. What is the price? Sickness, old age, and death; tragedy, hunger, sorrow, pain, and sufferingâall these must exist in order for evolution to operate. Without death there can be no evolution. Without sickness, pain, and tragedy there can be no adaptation and natural selection. All living things must pay dearly for the miracle of their existence. We human beings must pay the highest price of all, because evolution has given us a brain capable of understanding death. And death lies across all our lives like some hideous, vulgar joke.
Does this qualify as a religion? I believe so. It gives us rules to live by. It highlights the importance of the family, of protecting and nurturing our children, of passing along our values to future generations. It gives us license to fully enjoy the blessings of evolutionâsex, love, food, family closeness, pleasureâwithout guilt. It encourages us to develop evolutionâs greatest gift to us: our intellects. It instructs us to appreciate this life as fully as possible, because we will never have another.
This, then, is my religion.
[F ROM the unpublished journals of the Reverend Hendricks Palliser, former rector, Kibbencook Episcopal Church. Courtesy of Elspeth Palliser Wallace, New London, Connecticut.]
September 30, 1965
It was a splendid, blustery autumn day, the clouds racing across the sky, the shadows running through the houses of the street. The birch is now crowned in yellow, and every gust of wind carried its leaves past my study window and into the wood. It was a day of mystery and vigor.
I have not had occasion in here to mention the professor across the street. He has recently returned from Africa with a monkey. This morning, R. asked me to call upon the professor. R. is upset at the noise and possible spread of âjungle diseases,â and she charged me with discovering how long it will be before the professor takes the monkey to his museum or the zoo.
Accordingly, I ventured across the street and rang the bell. During the course of the visit the monkeyâit is a chimpanzee named
âIâm concentrating,â he protested. âIt isnât working.â
And then he died.
My mother wept, mostly out of hurt and frustration. The old crank, in her mind, had wasted his dying breath without ever saying how much he loved us. Nor did he leave us with a touching farewell speech. But to me he had said as much in his own peculiar way, and shown his love just as fiercely, by demonstrating how afraid he was of leaving us. In fact, I never realized how much he loved us until his deathbed scene.
My father died just after I had graduated from Columbia University and had joined the curatorial staff at the Boston Museum of Natural History. His atheism gave me the freedom to reject Christianity without struggle or pain. It was at this time, dealing with my fatherâs death, that I had a conversion of sorts myself: I realized that evolution was, in fact, my religion.
This may, perhaps, sound eccentric. Let me explain. There can be no doubt: life is a miraculous thing, and even more miraculous is human intelligence. Our world, this earth, is a surpassingly beautiful place, perfectly suited to our needs. It is
as if
the world were created for us, so perfect is it. But this is an illusion; in fact,
we
were created for the world. The world is just right for us because weâve been adapting to it for millions of years.
Love, sex, family, the pleasures of food, intellectual delight, friendship, appreciation of beauty, the pleasure of exercise andgood health, the excitement of sport and adventureâall these qualities were given to us, not by God, but by evolution.
There is a catch, however. Evolution extracts a price. What is the price? Sickness, old age, and death; tragedy, hunger, sorrow, pain, and sufferingâall these must exist in order for evolution to operate. Without death there can be no evolution. Without sickness, pain, and tragedy there can be no adaptation and natural selection. All living things must pay dearly for the miracle of their existence. We human beings must pay the highest price of all, because evolution has given us a brain capable of understanding death. And death lies across all our lives like some hideous, vulgar joke.
Does this qualify as a religion? I believe so. It gives us rules to live by. It highlights the importance of the family, of protecting and nurturing our children, of passing along our values to future generations. It gives us license to fully enjoy the blessings of evolutionâsex, love, food, family closeness, pleasureâwithout guilt. It encourages us to develop evolutionâs greatest gift to us: our intellects. It instructs us to appreciate this life as fully as possible, because we will never have another.
This, then, is my religion.
[F ROM the unpublished journals of the Reverend Hendricks Palliser, former rector, Kibbencook Episcopal Church. Courtesy of Elspeth Palliser Wallace, New London, Connecticut.]
September 30, 1965
It was a splendid, blustery autumn day, the clouds racing across the sky, the shadows running through the houses of the street. The birch is now crowned in yellow, and every gust of wind carried its leaves past my study window and into the wood. It was a day of mystery and vigor.
I have not had occasion in here to mention the professor across the street. He has recently returned from Africa with a monkey. This morning, R. asked me to call upon the professor. R. is upset at the noise and possible spread of âjungle diseases,â and she charged me with discovering how long it will be before the professor takes the monkey to his museum or the zoo.
Accordingly, I ventured across the street and rang the bell. During the course of the visit the monkeyâit is a chimpanzee named
Similar Books
