Science as the logical follow-on to Religion

Do you read E. O. Wilson?

Edward O. Wilson (Biology Professor at Harvard -- two Pulitzer
prizes) experienced a falling away from religious beliefs which he
had grown up with. He says he was more pious than the average
teenager in Birmingham, Alabama, having been baptized "...laid back in
the waters..." by the Southern Baptist Church.

He says in his recent book, "Consilience":

"...I had no desire to purge religious feelings. They were bred in
me; they suffused the wellsprings of my creative life. I also
retained a small measure of common sense. To wit, people must
belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than
themselves. We are obliged by the deepest drives of the human
spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have
a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.
Could Holy Writ be just the first literate attempt to explain the
universe and make ourselves significant within it? Perhaps science
is a continuation on new and better-tested ground to attain the
same end. If so, then in that sense science is religion liberated
and writ large."

Do you like that: "Science is religion liberated and writ large"?

earle
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Relevant Pages

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