Speaker:- John Maindonald
Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell

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John Maindonald © 7 April 2024

From the time when he returned from his five year journey around the world, Darwin thought long and hard, not just about the relationships between living things, but also about life and living. He moved from relatively orthodox Anglican to an agnostic who never ceased to wonder at the world of nature and the place of humans in it. While he never identified as a Unitarian, he was exposed to multiple sources of Unitarian influence. A Unitarian fellow scientist wrote that:-

“as a Man he exemplified in his own life that true religion, which is deeper, wider, and loftier than any Theology.”

[W B Carpenter. Charles Darwin: his life and work. Modern Review 1882 3: page 523.]

Three weeks ago, we looked at the manner in which, from a very privileged position in society, Darwin was able to gain the knowledge and skills that fitted him to work as Naturalist on the British Admiralty ship the Beagle. We saw how this passionate student of Nature felt forced to the conclusion that a common evolutionary origin for all living things was needed to explain his observations.

Speaker:- John Maindonald
Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell

Due to gremlins with recording the early part of the service is missing from the recordings.

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Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.

John Maindonald © 17 March 2024

Charles Darwin, who lived through the middle years of the 1800s, is familiar to most of us as the man who laid the foundations of the modern theory of evolution. His ideas have had dramatic continuing effects on our view of ourselves and of the world of which we are part. The idea that living things shared a common evolutionary heritage was not new. What was new was the mechanism that Darwin, along with Alfred Wallace who came up with very similar ideas at the same time, proposed. Darwin worked his arguments into a book of almost 500 pages that was widely read and finally carried the day in the world of science. It is a careful assembly of evidence, from animal breeding, from geology, and from the way that different life forms are distributed across different continents and islands.

Speaker:- John Maindonald
Worship Leader:- Shirin Caldwell

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Follow this shortcut to the bottom of the page for the various readings, videos, etc. shared in the service.

John Maindonald © 8 October 2023

John Donne (1572-1631), who wrote the words that I want to ponder today, lived in England in troubled times. He was born to a staunchly Roman Catholic family at a time when it was illegal to be a practicing Catholic.