Evolution We All Live in Darwin's World by Karen Wright
"A given religion adapts its members to their local environment, enabling them to achieve by collective action what they cannot achieve alone or even together in the absence of religion,? Wilson writes. ?The primary benefits of religion take place in this world, not the next.? The religious emphasis on otherworldly beliefs evolved, Wilson says, because supernatural explanations seem to motivate human cooperation better than factual ones. From an evolutionary perspective, it does not matter what you believe in, as long as that belief works to give you a selective advantage.
Harnessed to a supernatural dimension, the belief in evolution could itself evolve into a kind of religion. Witness the case of one Michael Dowd, an itinerant minister who calls himself an ?evolutionary evangelist? and preaches the ?holy trajectory? of evolution. ?I thank God for the entire 14-billion-year epic of cosmic, biological, and human emergence,? he notes on his Web site. ?Ironically, evolution gives us a more intimate and personal relationship with God because God is no longer far off, unnatural, and impotent. And it gives us a way of thinking about religion that helps us understand how and why religions are different, and how we can cooperate across ethnic and religious differences to cocreate a thriving world together. Both of these are, to my mind, really Good News.?
In imbuing science with a sense of personal meaning, Dowd resembles Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist who envisioned humankind and the universe evolving in the direction of a divine, infinitely complex consciousness he called the Omega Point. But the two remain an extremely rare breed: devout believers in science whose teleological claims flout the rigors of scientific verification. Unlike Dowd and Teilhard de Chardin, Wilson espouses a strictly secular enthusiasm. However much they may disagree about the ends, though, these very different Darwinian thinkers agree on the means.
?Organisms evolve, and at the end of the day, we are organisms,? Wilson says. ?You just can?t deny that.?
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Interesting, isn't it, that the one thing the Right really has right is the survival value of religion. No wonder they are going crazy with the secular and and perhaps increasingly anti-religious left. The left is out to make us less fit to survive. That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
"A given religion adapts its members to their local environment, enabling them to achieve by collective action what they cannot achieve alone or even together in the absence of religion,? Wilson writes. ?The primary benefits of religion take place in this world, not the next.? The religious emphasis on otherworldly beliefs evolved, Wilson says, because supernatural explanations seem to motivate human cooperation better than factual ones. From an evolutionary perspective, it does not matter what you believe in, as long as that belief works to give you a selective advantage.
Harnessed to a supernatural dimension, the belief in evolution could itself evolve into a kind of religion. Witness the case of one Michael Dowd, an itinerant minister who calls himself an ?evolutionary evangelist? and preaches the ?holy trajectory? of evolution. ?I thank God for the entire 14-billion-year epic of cosmic, biological, and human emergence,? he notes on his Web site. ?Ironically, evolution gives us a more intimate and personal relationship with God because God is no longer far off, unnatural, and impotent. And it gives us a way of thinking about religion that helps us understand how and why religions are different, and how we can cooperate across ethnic and religious differences to cocreate a thriving world together. Both of these are, to my mind, really Good News.?
In imbuing science with a sense of personal meaning, Dowd resembles Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest and paleontologist who envisioned humankind and the universe evolving in the direction of a divine, infinitely complex consciousness he called the Omega Point. But the two remain an extremely rare breed: devout believers in science whose teleological claims flout the rigors of scientific verification. Unlike Dowd and Teilhard de Chardin, Wilson espouses a strictly secular enthusiasm. However much they may disagree about the ends, though, these very different Darwinian thinkers agree on the means.
?Organisms evolve, and at the end of the day, we are organisms,? Wilson says. ?You just can?t deny that.?
=============================
Interesting, isn't it, that the one thing the Right really has right is the survival value of religion. No wonder they are going crazy with the secular and and perhaps increasingly anti-religious left. The left is out to make us less fit to survive. That doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
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