Even people who have a scientific turn of mind are often disappointed with the Theory of Evolution. It’s very blunt and plain. It has no frills. It has no emotional lift for the soul. Ursula Goodenough once wrote in The Sacred Depths of Nature: “The Scientific version of how things are, and how they came to be, is much more likely, at first encounter, to elicit alienation, anomie, and nihilism, responses that offer little promise for motivating our allegiance or moral orientation.”

Reacting with alienation, anomie and nihilism to scientific theories that explain how the world works can only happen if you have a wish that the world is different from what it is.

Long, long ago, the word “enchantment” used to be a negative word. So were “glamour” and “illusion.” These words described a condition where a person was deceived into believing lies. If something was enchanting it was presenting a false front which would lead you, most often, into danger. The apple that the witch presented to Snow White was enchanted, it was charmed. The witch, herself, was disguised with a glamour. The bad queen did all that stuff in order to lure Snow White to her doom. The handsome prince kisses Snow White and disenchants her, he disillusions her, wakes her up to the real world … and they live happily ever after.

The ideas of a talking snake and a fabulous tree in a magic garden are enchanting. They are charming. And as such, they are false.

Once upon a time becoming disenchanted was the prelude to a happy ending. The charming villain was defeated. Good old reality might not be as shiny and as sparkly as the glamoured version, but it was reassuring in its steadiness and reality is were everything is.  

The Theory of Evolution is not an enchanting story. It’s not glamorous. It’s not charming. But it does provide the wonderful reassuring feel of being on solid ground.

  Miracles have abounded through history. Jesus and lots of saints have been lifted bodily into heaven which would have meant that those persons would pass through a stratosphere that people didn’t know existed, up into interstellar space which is a vacuum and is minus 273 degrees Celsius. Statues of the virgin have wept pure virgin olive oil. People have bled from mysterious wounds in the palms of their hands.  I could do an entire blog post on the Shroud of Turin.

The thing about these miracles is that they are one-off. They are rare and not repeatable. If you buy a statute of the Virgin Mary, set it on your coffee table and wait for it to weep oil, you are going to be waiting a long time.

The thing about unglamorous, unenchanting, uncharming miracles is that they happen all the time.

About 3 million people visit Lourdes, France, every year looking for a miracle cure for just about every illness you can imagine. About 35 people per year claim to have experienced such miracles. So far the Catholic Church has confirmed 68 to be genuine. That’s 68 since 1914 when they started trying to verify which of the cures are actual miracles.

Antibiotics, staten drugs, chemotherapy--none of that stuff has any shine to it. When a miracle happens regularly and reliably it’s not enchanting. It’s not charming. It’s just life--regular, steady and reliable.

Life itself is a natural property of physics and chemistry. Given the right conditions, life is inevitable. After that, evolution is inevitable. If conditions change, life will change to meet the challenge or become extinct. If extinction happens, well, evolution made us. It can make more.

When Snow White became enchanted she fell asleep. She was dead to the world. When the enchantment was broken she woke up. Yes, if she could have clung to her enchantment she would have been beautiful forever. She would never age and die. But she would also never be able to participate in being alive and therefore could never enjoy it. The enchanted Snow White wouldn’t know any pain or discomfort, but she wouldn’t know any happiness either. Her enchantment robbed her of her birthright.

Her birthright was not a peaceful and painless sleep. It was the kindly woodsman who saved her life, her seven dwarf friends, her handsome prince and even her evil step-mother, because you have to have a good villain to have a good story. 

Speaking of villains, I’d like to insert Richard Dawkins in here:
“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”

Reality is everything there is. Isn’t everything enough?

—Susan