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Life Arts    H4'ed 11/16/14

Edward O. Wilson Inveighs Against Organized Religion (BOOK REVIEW)

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Even though Professor Wilson does not happen to advert explicitly to Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel BRAVE NEW WORLD (1935), Professor Wilson seems to be advancing his own idea of a purportedly utopian future for the human race.

For example, Professor Wilson raises the following question: To what extent can the human genotype be retrofitted -- presumably through altering genes involved in human reproduction? "Shall it be a lot, a little bit, or none at all? The choice will be forced on us because our species has begun to cross what is the most important threshold in the technoscientific era."

Now, the Roman Catholic bishops find it impossible to abandon the past interpretations of the Roman Catholic tradition of natural-law moral theory. Consequently, it is a safe bet that the bishops will say "none at all" in response to the question that Professor Wilson raises regarding gene modifications.

Professor Wilson also says that he "doubt[s] that many would object to gene substitution." But I bet that the Roman Catholic bishops would object to gene substitution and try to rally other Roman Catholics to object to it as well.

But how will other people respond to the question of gene substitution? In all honesty, I don't know. Neither does Professor Wilson. The possibilities involved in possibly making gene modifications in human reproduction are still too new to most people for anyone to be able to predict at the present time how the question will be answered in the future.

As noted above, Professor Wilson sees the possible utopian future that he envisions as a natural extension of the eusociality of the human race.

Here's Professor Wilson's thesis about eusociality: "Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals."

If Professor Wilson's thesis is correct, then groups of altruists might band together in the spirit of eusociality. But note how Professor Wilson once again works with disjunctive logic here. Perhaps the disjunctive logic of Ramist logic that was instituted at HarvardCollege in the seventeenth century lives on today in Professor Wilson.

Taking a hint from his observation about groups, I guess that Professor Wilson see his short polemical book as a way to rally kindred altruistic spirits who hold his materialistic philosophical position to come together and join him in denouncing everybody who does not hold this philosophical position.

In his book INSIGHT: A STUDY OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, mentioned above, Lonergan envisions the emergence of individual persons who could be described as altruists, to use Professor Wilson's term. Presumably such altruists could join together with other altruists to form groups.

Historically, most Christians could be described as altruists. In Europe, groups of Christian altruists beat out other groups of people to establish what was referred to for centuries as Christendom. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, groups of Christian altruists battled one another. So groups of Christian altruists did not always practice what Professor Wilson styles as eusociality.

In effect, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church declared a spirit of peace with all Protestants and all other religious traditions. Perhaps that spirit of peace can be seen as an example of the spirit eusociality.

Evidently, Vatican II' declaration of peace with other religious tradition has escaped Professor Wilson's notice:

"Unfortunately, a religious group defines itself foremost by its creation story, the supernatural narrative that explains how humans came into existence. And this story is the heart of tribalism. No matter how gentle and high-minded, or subtly explained, the core belief assures its members that God favors them above all others. It teaches that members of other religions worship the wrong gods, use wrong rituals, follow false prophets, and believe fantastic creation stories. There is no way around the soul-satisfying but cruel discrimination that organized religions by definition must practice among themselves."

Let's review. Organized religions are examples of organized groups. Elsewhere Professor Wilson points out that belonging to an organized group such as the group of faculty at HarvardUniversity typically gives the members of the group a sense of superiority.

Surely most human persons are not going to give up belonging to groups in favor of living a solitary life. Granted, certain persons prefer the monastic life of being solitary inasmuch as this may be possible.

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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