I’ve discovered the musical group The Low Anthem, thanks to Letterman. They played a song on his show the other night from their second album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin. I’ve embedded the official video for it from YouTube below.
It’s an intriguing, as well as hauntingly beautiful, song. Theologians take note: I believe this captures the spirit of the Intelligentsia regarding the cultural aftershocks left by Darwin’s theory of evolution. I think evolution is well established and efforts to disprove it are in vain… mainly because these efforts are mostly non-scientific. If there were scientific arguments against evolution that would be one thing… but so-called challenges to evolution such as Intelligent Design are not scientific… they are religious objections that, very awkwardly, try and use science to bolster a conclusion already held: evolution is anti-God and therefore must be wrong.
Theologians, I say take note because I think the sadness of this video comes from the loss of God that evolution brings to most. I myself don’t think God is lost as a result, but I would agree that it takes a real bit of effort to get to this understanding. I also agree there are plenty of folks out there that are all too happy to conclude that atheism is the only response. I don’t fault them for their atheism, but I do fault them if they insist that we all be atheists… that’s just fundamentalism and intolerance of it’s own kind.
But we do, as theists, face a real loss of God for most people. I like this video and song because it states this fact poignantly. If theologians are to do their job aright, then this is where we start.