Letters to the Editor
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Science seems better than religion...
Wilson is right, and Ms. Schwarz seems to have missed the point. If emotional problems get you down, then the stability and functionality of science can also be helpful.
Ms. Schwarz seems to miss the humor inherent in her rejection of Wilson, and then her reconstruction of his argument that religion is evolved to make the pain of emotion less hurtful.
Sure, in the past, people who lost fitness through being too scientific would be outbred by those who used religion to maintain their personal stability, and also used religion to increase group stability and, as you must know, fierceness in dealing the outgroup.
Now, in this world, we need to lose the fierceness, and it doesn't seem to be happening. The pressure against religion is the pressure to stay alive...
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Cultural Inertia
Most discussions of theism and atheism hinge upon the definition of the term "god". It's so incredibly culturally loaded that the discussion rarely ever has a chance to begin.
Personally, characteristics of "deity" such as "Uncaused Cause" hold a great deal of appeal to me. As soon as people begin to project human characteristics, I think they've moved from an actual concept of Deity into Tribal Shamanism. Nothing that is the paragon of the Infinite Trancendental can actually have anthropomorphic characteristics. This isn't new; read your Spinoza.
Human cognition is defined by its limitations.
I don't think ANYONE would have a problem with religion if it were only a bastion of beneficence. The problem is that many religions are used as a social control mechanism that promotes conformity (the control of behavior through guilt, shame, peer pressure, and artificial punishment/reward systems like an afterlife.) That conformity gives it a strong voting block and an inability to compromise with the "heretics".
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Who the hell cares?
While I don't dispute that scientific evidence points out that life evolved from primordial ooze, I can't help but wonder, as a non-scientist, why do I care? My main concern with existence isn't how I got here, but what the hell do I do now. Which is why I like my religion. Being Jewish, I'm less concerned with how the world was created and what's going to happen when I die than I am with trying to make the world and myself better. While I appreciate the need for someone (preferably scientists who devote their lives to answering these questions) to discover the origins of life on this planet and others, I can't really bring myself to care. It's a lot like the old free will v. predestination argument: What difference does it make? I've still got to live my life as best I can.
Having said that, my hat's off to Wilson. He's obviously done good work in his field and hopefully helped society along to a better understanding of the world. While I disagree with him on some points (such as the almost religious devotion to the idea that behaviors are shaped by biological evolution), I disagree with him on those points on primarily scientific grounds, having a decent understanding of biology myself.
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Framemaker v2.0
I would like to extend the parable, if I may.
You convince the framemaker that, indeed, there is paint to be found on the canvas. That, in fact, there is a canvas. That, further, there are multiple different tones and hues of said paint on the canvas. Your friend, who has been patiently listening to you, and is completely convinced of everything you are saying, goes home after the museum, can't stop thinking about it. He mentions it on his blog, and describes the conversation, and how, listening to you, he became convinced that you were absolutely correct, and goes on to discuss his feelings of awe and inspiration. Your friend, who happens to be writer, has a good blog following, and so his ruminations are quickly dispersed, widely discussed, and generally disseminated. Eventually, people are convinced that this painting, and no other, is all that is good, true, real, and worthwhile in the painting world. Never mind the other works by the same artist, it is this one, single painting that describes and defines all that is possible and of value in painting.
A bit absurd, but tit for tat. I understand the general thrust of what you are saying, Freddie, but I think that you misunderstand science- at least in its best form. Science does, indeed, measure, and scientists, when pressed, have, ultimately, only these measurements to fall back on. Any scientist worth her salt, though, will be more than happy to admit that we may not have the whole picture. However, to have things included in the picture, phenomena must be reproducible. And this is why your reactions to the painting are NOT science. Everything else about it, mass, dimensions, amount of paint used, rate of paint decay, etc., IS science. I don't think many scientists would argue that those secondary effects are not there, they just don't have the tools to measure them. I think Wilson hits the nail on the head when he says that scientists, if confronted with a reproducible miracle (ie. something that stands outside of our current understanding of how the world works, for example, light, wave/particle duality, coherence), will work hard to incorporate the new data and evaluate what it means to old precepts. And if it makes you feel better, when scientists say that they have no proof of these other things existing, rest assured that there is no judgement, moral or otherwise, in that. That is simply the fact. The view that scientists are actively exclusionary about what is, or what is possible, is what drives us crazy when people tell us that we don't "get" religion.
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The Odd Alchemy of Turning Mysteries into Certainties
Heraclitus insisted "All is flux, nothing is stationary." His point is wise, but not entirely accurate. Wilson, Dennett, et al are supporting a kind of certainty similar in nature to the kind of certainty their Darwinian ancestors desired. What's changed?
Regardless of whether you're of the faith or against it, in all likelihood you too are searching for certainty in your cosmological view. And it's that abiding search for certainty that has been an unchanging component of human existence since 100,000 BC when burials, replete with spiritual offerings, were initiated by Neaderthals. Somehow, apparently, humans couldn't adapt to uncertainty very well so they relied on their imaginations for creation stories that provided at least a semblance of security in a big bad world. Those formative creatures were betting on prolonged salvation, and through habituation those bets were ritualized into beliefs and held as certainties. And so it has been, from cave to cave, tribe to tribe, the same essential quest for spiritual certainty from that point onward.
The quest for scientific certainty is essentially the same search, but one conducted mainly in the logical hemispehere, now relying more on microscopes and lab data than on the human imagination to produce the scenarios. It's a tad ironic that Darwinian evolution is based on "hard-wired" (instinctual) processes that aren't necessarily conscious, which, to a great extent, have also formed the basis of spiritual and religious development throughout the ages (faith = antirational = instinctual). In this regard, Darwinian processes have more in common with religious faith than with the skeptical logic summarily used to dethrone theism, delegitimize religiosity, render much of spirituality and metaphysics superfluous, while supporting the notion of Darwinian evolution. One apparently certain view replaced by another apparently certain view, neither of them complete on their own.
Spirituality and religions weren't established just for the sake of attaining a favorable seat in the afterlife, though that was part of the bargain. They were also insurance policies against ambiguities, mysteries, and profound complexities, producing relatively simple creation stories that could be passed on, sets of rules that provided order to a world of paganistic instincts, and tales that ideally explained everything else one needed to know to negotiate the back woods of an undeveloped world. Science is merely the modernized, rationalized version of that template. Unfortunately, the ideological way in which it's being spread greatly limits the imagination and meritorious metaphysics from offering viable options.
Heraclitus also noted, "Religion is a disease, but it is a noble disease." What's the core disease? Humankind's inability to thrive in the world of uncertainties, and to cure that ailment the West now routinely turns to Science - the modern noble disease. Once, however, humankind learns to adapt to uncertainty as well as it has to cubicles, fast food and cell phones that disease will finally be cured. But don't hold your breath.