The Evolution Sutra

It must have been very exciting for the first few couples, suddenly discovering those thrilling sensations of having sex. Try to imagine two proud microbes, mama and papa -- you've seen them on the Petri dish -- looking at their little baby microbe saying, "Isn't it cute! Look at it twitch!"

But there was a catch, as usual. Once the mama and papa microbe got their DNA into a separate new body, it was no longer necessary for them to stick around forever. Their information had been passed on. (Life is information!) So the mama and papa microbe eventually became programmed to grow old and die. What happened, to put it bluntly, is that life traded sex for death. 

Now there's a choice for you. Would you rather live forever without sex, or have sex and die? Of course the question is ridiculous, because we have no choice in the matter. It was only through a phenomenal number of DNA combinations, through sex, over the long course of biological history, that life grew into a being complex enough that it can even contemplate the choice, or begin to understand its own origins. In order to become the smart-ass creatures we are today we had to have both -- sex and death. (Not to mention the fact that if there had been no death, earthlings would have run out of room a long time ago.)

At least now we know enough to acknowledge the bacteria and microbes as the parents of us all. And it's time to give them their props. Let's offer a deep bow to the smallest but not the least among us, the brilliant and innovative progenitors who invented sex, mobility, oxygen breathing -- all sorts of fun things. BACTERIA! MICROBES! Without them there would be no Adam and Eve. They were the first to be alive.

New Animal on the Block

Drive all blames into one. ~ Tibetan Buddhist saying [lojong]

Friends, do you want to find forgiveness? Then place yourself in the story of evolution. If you believe in sin, or that you are seriously flawed as a human being, or that all human beings are similarly flawed, then sink yourself into deep time, into the history of life, and you will see that none of us is to blame. We are all saved, forgiven, absolved! Can I get a witness?

If we see ourselves in the story of evolution we realize that we are not our fault. We did not invent ourselves. We were created out of the shape-shifting stream of life as it danced with ever-changing earth conditions and natural phenomena. We did not choose our particular type of consciousness or our instincts for love or for killing, any more than we chose our thumbs.

So in the story of evolution we are absolved of our supposed sins, the original one as well as all those we have copied. Mother Nature forgives us because we have no choice but to be who we are, and also because we are still such a young species, and know not what we do.

We are, in fact, a brand new kind of animal. (I hope you aren't offended by being called an animal. In some contexts you love the designation. "You animal, you!") Our eminent scientists classify us as animals for very good biological reasons, but most of us refuse the designation. You'll find evidence of our collective denial at any café or supermarket where there is a sign in the window saying "No Animals Allowed." Humans walk right in!

But we are a brand new kind of animal, and just figuring out that we are one. The body that you and I inherited breaks away from the rest of our primate crowd only about five million years ago -- just yesterday in biological time. That's when the Great Rift Valley was created in Africa and our ancestors had to go from the trees of the jungle to live in the tall grasses of the savannah. It must have been as difficult as first learning how to live on land.

Among those who began to hang out on the ground was an ape-woman whom the scientists have named "Lucy," considered to be the mother of us all. Can we therefore presume that the father of us all was "Ricky"?

After living on the ground for a while our ancestors began making crude stone tools, and became a sub-species of human who we now call homo habilis, or "handyman." Obviously we weren't yet Jewish.

The "handyman" started standing upright more often, probably to fix a leaky roof, and after a while we seemed to like it so much that soon our ancestors became what we now call "homo erectus," or "upright" humans. And we're not talking morality here. In fact, standing up put our sexual organs right out front for everyone to see, and no doubt that led directly to the invention of the loincloth. Four-legged animals don't have to worry about clothing because their private parts are hidden by their stance. Once we stood up we exhibited full-frontal nudity.

Standing up not only brought us shame, it also brought us pride. I have a theory, fully uncorroborated, that the upright stance elevated our heads too far off the ground, and that's precisely when we started feeling remote from the earth. We also started looking down at other creatures. We thought the crawlers weren't as good as those who walk. Our upright stance may have also contributed to our belief that we came from some other realm. With our heads lifted high, we thought we were above it all.