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In recent years scientists have determined that chimpanzees have about 98% of the same DNA as humans. Usually, this 2% difference is seen as an advantage on the human side. Watching the world go by, I'm not always sure which species is on top.

The evolution / intelligent design debate, the various stem cell controversies, and our inability to care for the environment while meeting our ever increasing demand for energy are just some of the issues that drive us to our core beliefs, theologically, politically, and culturally. There's an old bumper sticker that says if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. Judging from the level of outrage on these issues, people are certainly paying attention, outraged at the godless baby-killers on the one hand, the puritanical witch-burners on the other. By offering a largely Unitarian perspective on the issues, I will be suggesting that is a way to move forward.

Intelligent design has a long history, usually played out in battles over the science curriculum used in schools. Initiatives here and elsewhere are trying to replace evolution-based science with "intelligent design," an alternative view of our origins. For those who missed it in science class, the short version of evolution is that living things have natural variation (some people are tall and others are short, for example) and that over time, the ones with the variations that best enable survival are the ones whose genes are passed on to the next generation. Intelligent design, on the other hand, states - in a nutshell - that there must have been an intelligent force creating the world, that life is too complex to have occurred through gradual evolution over a very long time. The historical legacy of intelligent design is creationism, the belief that God created the Universe. Given that creationist approaches to science education have repeatedly been ruled unconstitutional, intelligent design is the new wrapper, suitably evasive about just who the intelligent designer is, though no one really has to ask.

In a brilliant phrasing, Jeffrey Coyne has described intelligent design as the "faith that dare not speak its name." One of the movement's leaders, William Dembski, described intelligent design in one document as "an emerging scientific research program...[that] attempt[s] to demonstrate its merits fair and square in the scientific world - without appeal to religious authority." In another, he declared that "[A]ny view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient...[T]he conceptual soundness of a theory cannot be maintained apart from Christ." One document was from a public source; the other from a fundamentalist writing. Lest there be any doubt, the "wedge document" that was leaked from the Discovery Institute, the leading intelligent design think thank, positions the movement as a "wedge that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points...Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

So... There is no doubt about the intention. Is intelligent design a legitimate alternative view of science? Two thirds of the population, including the current occupant of the Oval Office, believe that it should be taught as an alternative way of seeing the world. Nearly half think that God created humans in pretty much finished form within the last 10,000 years. Building on this base of support, proponents have successfully lobbied for intelligent design, so students in Cobb County, Georgia have had warning labels placed on their textbooks, while their counterparts in Dover, Pennsylvania have had required anti-evolution statements read to them and alternative textbooks provided. We'll loop back to Dover in a minute. The most strategic thinking, however, has been done by our neighbors in Kansas. Their state Board of Education had the wisdom to know that intelligent design cannot stand as a science. By definition you can't have a scientific explanation that says...and then God intervened. As astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson noted, in science, using God as a catch-all is a cop-out. You go as far as you can, and then say "And God did the rest..." Implicit in that statement is the belief that because I don't understand it, no one else possibly can, so it must have been God. My lack of understanding speaks for all time!

To avoid the obvious conflict with science needing to be free of divine intervention, our friends to the west got around this pesky nuisance by re-defining science. Science, as it is now defined for Kansas schools, explicitly allows supernatural explanations. God can do it!! Of course, an interventionist God is problematic. Given that 99% of species that ever existed are extinct, it's hard to claim intelligent design. Imagine God taking his report card home to Mr. and Mrs. God (it would, of course, be an intact heterosexual couple a la Ward and June Cleaver), showing that he got a 1 in biology. Hey, 99% of the species didn't make it. .. He earned the 1. There will be no grade inflation in this universe. No God Left Behind and all that.

Back to the Dover, Pennsylvania case, there was a recent court case that paralleled the legendary Scopes trial from the 1920's. In it, a group a parents sued the Dover school board over the requirement that a disclaimer casting doubt on evolution be read before science classes, and that an alternative, intelligent design-based textbook be made available to students. Over the course of the trial, the stars on both sides came out, and the merits of intelligent design were argued. As it turns out, despite the claims that intelligent design can stand on its own as a science, there are no publications accepted by the scientific community as legitimate that support a design position. This peer review process is the filter through which scientific research has to pass to be accepted as legitimate. In fact, Michael Bahe, one of the scientific luminaries in the intelligent design world, acknowledged that the very nature of science would have to be redefined for intelligent design to be considered a science. Well, like Toto, we're not in Kansas any more, and intelligent design just isn't a science. It could be true, but it's not science. Policies won't make it so.

Judge Jones, in his ruling, called the intelligent design arguments "breathtaking in their inanity" and chastised the defendants "who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, [but] would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy." It's an interesting religion that doesn't start with the truth. As Unitarians, we can do better, building on our commitment to a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and an obligation to respect the interdependent web of life that we are all part of.

Another major issue where science and religion are currently engaged in a battle is the stem cell debate. At the risk of doing medical school in 20 words or less, stem cells hold promise to cure a wide range of diseases and disabilities, from diabetes to spinal cord injuries. Aside from Missouri, many other states are gripped in efforts to restrict what questions can be investigated - there's the "people playing God" scenario again. There are a few glimmers of hope - such as a state-funded initiative in California and a new privately funded lab based at Harvard University - establishing routes to bypass the current federal restrictions. Important, but the global cash cow for medical research is our federal government. Having the National Institute for Health forced by presidential order to sit on the bench severely restricts what research can be done with stem cells.

Most would agree that the core issue is the use of what are called "embryonic" stem cells. These embryonic cells can grow into the types of cells needed to repair a defective heart or restore function to areas with neurological damage. While these seem unarguable goals for medicine, human embryos are destroyed in the process. In current practice, these are usually left over embryos from fertility clinics that would otherwise be destroyed as medical waste, but their use brings out quite a bit of fervor especially among the anti-abortion groups. Their argument runs along the line that these embryos have the potential to become human beings, and therefore deserve the same protection as fully developed human beings. At the very least, they argue, that it is the beginning of the proverbial "slippery slope" that Charles Krauthammer, a presidential advisor, described as going "slowly and by increments...from stem cells to embryo farms to factories with fetuses hanging (metaphorically) on meat hooks waiting to be cut open and used by the already born.

The alternative offered by the so-called "pro-life" groups is to use adult stem cells. These aren't really adults - you can't take them out drinking - but these adult stem cells are more fully developed in terms of their functions. Think pre-assembled toys, instead of the flexibility that comes with your new Lego set. You have probably seen the TV ad with the lab-coated Georgetown Ph.D. making the solemn comparison that adult stem cells are curing many diseases while embryonic stem cells haven't cured anything. Imagine an ad in 1950 denouncing space exploration: "Cars have taken people many places; space ships haven't done anything." They're just not the same thing. Scientists researching use of embryonic stem cells don't dismiss adult cells as having value, but maintain that many therapies require the ability to change that is found in the embryonic cells.

The so-called "pro-life" lobby puts a lot behind the embryo, but I argue that to be truly pro-life you have to go further. A truly pro-life position helps the pre-teen with diabetes, the mother in a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis, and the grandfather with Alzheimers. Yes, the embryo has the potential to become life, but potential has to be balanced with the reality of lives currently being lived. Michael Gazzaniga makes an apt analogy: Assume that a typical Home Depot contains enough "stuff" to build 30 houses. If a Home Depot burns down tonight, the story in the paper will be that one Home Depot burned down, not 30 potential houses. Even some die-hard conservatives like Senator Orrin Hatch support embryonic stem cell research. As he notes, "I come to this issue with a strong pro-life, pro-family record. But I also strongly believe that a critical part of being pro-life is to support measures that help the living." Yes, Orrin Hatch getting kudos from a Unitarian pulpit. You just never know what to expect...

On the surface, there really isn't much debate about stem cell research: One poll found that 73% of Catholics (who routinely ignore their leadership anyway) and a stunning 80% of evangelicals support the practice. The leadership of these groups, however, appears to be so fully enmeshed in the anti-abortion debates, that they have lost touch with their constituencies. From President Bush to Archbishop Burke, they are swimming upstream. Virtually everyone has a loved one afflicted by a disease that stem cell research has promise to alleviate if not cure. It appears from the survey data that human suffering trumps the abstraction of the embryo, which has neither consciousness nor pain. We shouldn't dismiss the embryos lightly, but there is a real choice to be made here.

Given the relative lack of opposition, why are stem cell initiatives so...well... opposed? Part of it comes back to imagery. The extreme right wing on this issue has crafted a set of images, including Krauthammer's reference to fetuses on meat hooks, and Bush's description of the process as "growing human beings for spare body parts." The Georgetown commercial goes beyond the false comparison of adult and embryonic stem cells to innuendo about human cloning, which no reputable scientist supports. All of these have a cumulative effect that makes people move away from supporting cures for their loved ones and toward feeling a need to defend the unborn and keep those crazy liberals from running wild.

A brief history lesson will help to bring these strands together. Think back to your math classes, with algebra and algorithms. A thousand years ago, the Muslim world was the center of higher learning, until religious leaders started to shut it down in an effort to bring people back to God, ending this period of dominance. Thirty years ago Americans came very close to criminalizing DNA research that has given us so much, just as we are doing now with stem cell research. Some recent proposals would provide jail sentences for even receiving treatments derived from unauthorized stem cell research. As it is, much of the innovation is now being done overseas, depriving us of a medical and moral leadership position that we could easily hold on to if we were committed to leading the way toward a cure.

Instead we have a growing theocracy with high priests like Bush and Burke redefining science to meet a narrow, allegedly Christian agenda, while it seeks to limit what can and cannot be the subject of inquiry. I imagine Jesus wouldn't recognize or support what his "followers" are doing in his name. As the bumper sticker says, "Jesus called, and he wants his religion back." It's time for us to help him take it back. We could do worse than build policy around Unitarian principles that respect the worth and dignity of people, respect conscience, and foster commitment to the larger web of life.

Different parts of the Bible give us contradictory messages. On the one hand, we are given dominion over the land, but we also have a stewardship responsibility for nurturing and protecting the world. To do that we need to be able to teach the next generation the science they will need to understand in order to protect the environment and bring about cures, and everyone needs to be free to think, explore, and grow. Shift the focus a bit with me. We all have minds to think with and hearts for commitment. Do we work from a dominion mindset that says because I don't know right now, no one will ever never know (so you shouldn't even ask), or do we as a nation exercise good stewardship, using our hearts and minds to advance our understanding and our ability to help our planet and each other?It's time to be good stewards, redefine what it means to be pro-life, and lead with a reverent and truly human instinct.