Letters to the Editor
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We Are God
I believe that we humans (each of us) and every other bit of matter in the universe is God.
The Big Bang theory is correct but God itself was the mass that went kaboom. It did it just to see what would happen out of boredom or intellectual curiousity.
You see, any existence with such intelligence and power would be suffering the same heaven is hell problem that Wilson so aptly describes. This would be a worthy endeavor for a God I think. The Old Testament was almost right when stating humans were created in his own image.
And if every atom is a part of God, then we humans certainly are, and somewhere within each of us, a portion of that power is resident. What if it's self-inposed challenge is to see what pinnacle of greatness this force could achieve? That would explain nature's advancing evolutionary chain.
The mystery of life is an infinite puzzle and may never be discerned. Except, perhaps, by my exquisite theory.
Unfortunately that still leaves the question "Where did this Big Bang creature come from?"
Did I tell you that my dog never quite catches his tail?
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Why I believe.
"A cynic
defined faith as the power of believing what you know isn't true; and this appears to be a
fairly accurate definition for the manifestations of faith as they appear in many
uninstructed minds, the fruit of the discipline of sects unenlightened by mystical
consciousness. But in the light of that consciousness we may define faith as the conscious
result of superconscious experience which has not been translated into terms of brainconsciousness,
and of which, therefore, the normal personality is not directly aware,
though it nevertheless feels, possibly with great intensity, the effects, and its emotional
reactions are fundamentally and permanently modified thereby." - Dion Fortune
Most people hold the false association that religion is about what cannot be perceived and science relates to that which can be perceived. In reality, religion is something you can indeed perceive, albeit in a more subjective way. In today's culture however, mystical experiences are either written off as meaningless coincidences, or mental illness by the scientists, and written off as sinful and evil by the religious. To those who have the free time, take up yoga, meditation, read about the qabalah. To those who are not close-minded, eventually you will personally experience something that science cannot explain and that implies the existence of a higher power.
I grew up a content agnostic. I was just fine without any kind of faith or spirituality. I didn't need it to adapt to existentialist horrors. I was just open to the possibility, and so I educated myself, and as a result, like many others, have experienced things that are utterly convincing that there is much more to the world than F = ma. Yes, most religions have a bit of misguidedness to them, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because something cannot be measured in a lab does not mean it is meaningless or does not exist. The idea that faith is just a crutch is willfully condescending and ignorant, a way for evangelical atheists to rationalize their belligerence towards anyone with faith.
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Edward O. Wilson
One can be religious without accepting the reality of either death OR heaven, as dictated by Christianity and Islam. Wilson is bound too tightly to western views of god and heaven and spirituality. Eastern religions allow the notion that existence won't end for us, nor will seeking and learning. In fact, that's why we exist--to do exactly what Wilson loves to do. I certainly agree with Wilson that tribal dominance shouldn't be part of it.
And yes, all creatures have souls. Why not?
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Wilson's beliefs
Wilson's opinions about religion are really no different from those of the average intelligent person. In Europe his views would be the default position of most of the population. It is only the anomalous survival of fundamentalism in the US that makes such views mildly interesting or controversial, or at least they would be controversial if honestly expressed by one of our cowardly politicians whose default position is to kow-tow to Christian fundamentalism.
Overall as a story this is more dog bites man than man bites dog.
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Wilson and heaven
When I was young and declared my preference for a scientific rather than religious view of the nature of the universe, I was told that scientists found that, the more they studied the universe, the more they turned to religion themselves.
It was some time before I learned that this was not true. Thanks to Edward O. Wilson for discussing not just his own views but those of other scientists, and showing again that the above is not true.
Wilson does fine up until the last question, where he declares his terror of heaven. If he is, as he appears to be, talking about the Christian heaven, he should have recognized that - like the religious scholars discussing astrophysics that he referred to earlier - this time he's the one who has left his area of competence.
One may postulate any sort of afterlife one would like to discuss, and then discuss whether one would like it. But if you're discussing the Christian heavenly afterlife, one should be aware that centuries of theologians have carefully distinguished "heaven" from mere "infinitely prolonged (and wearisome) existence." One may dispute whether this distinction is likely; but please, Prof. Wilson, do not talk as if you'd discovered a loophole that never occurred to the Christians. When you talk of the wearisomeness of heaven, you're talking about some other afterlife, not the Christian concept of heaven.
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God and Art
From Raymond Chandler's Playback:
"If God were omnipotent or omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to creat the universe at all. There is no sucess where there is no possibility for failure, no art without the resistence of the medium."
Marlowe could dig it; so can I.
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In the interest of the big questions, the piece missed Wilson's Big Answers
Unfortunately, the interviewer, by taking an individualist approach toward questioning Wilson, missed the opportunity to understand or extract what Wilson actually thinks about religion and its purpose in human society-- and why it has been so persistent for so long.
Having not read Wilson's latest tome on this, I can't quote him. But I suspect, from the few clues given in the interview, that Wilson would tell folks that as an adaptation, religion really is a method of transgenerational knowledge transfer that encodes, in a very robust form, ways for humans to adapt successfully to environments. Religion is very much a social technology, with the most recent form-- monotheism-- being the most advanced technology.
Consider the arc of religion-- pantheism/frightened mysticism, to place-based polytheism, to monotheism/god in the sky (portable god) and understand them to be technological adaptations to a particular time-- and religion starts to make a lot more sense in contemporary, as well as historic societies. The most recent religious technology advancement-- monotheism-- allowed the Teutonic tribes to conquer all of Europe, and then, after the social evolution into the nation-states of Europe, America. It still runs us as a powerful social technology in present-day history-- or why would our President still talk longingly of Crusades?