Letters to the Editor
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What's left unsaid
Wilson has a brilliant mind and he speaks with remarkable clarity about complex issues, but he leaves unsaid what I believe to be the great motivating force behind why humans continually search for transcendence and God: existential terror.
We fear our own mortality and the idea that after death there is nothing and the universe simply barrels on without us. We fear (even more than death, perhaps, which at least has a certainty to it) the idea that the events of life unfold with no plan, that all is chaos, that there is no hidden meaning behind South Asian tsunami and all the rest. As long as people fear these twin demons, they will always cling to religion like a small child clinging to a parent's robe in the dark.
How fortunate we are to have minds like Wilson's to light some small measure of the darkness.