Whew! As we will see below, Professor Wilson favors eusociality. (The prefix "eu-" means "good.") Evidently, he does not favor eusociality with anybody who does not happen to agree completely with his materialistic philosophical position.
However, unlike Professor Wilson, the atheist German philosopher Jurgen Habermas has urged his fellow atheists in academia to hold their fire against organized religion in his book BETWEEN NATURALISM AND RELIGION (2008).
For a temperate defense of evolutionary theory and a careful critique of objections to evolutionary theory advanced by Protestant fundamentalists, see James H. Fetzer's book RENDER UNTO DARWIN: PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT'S CRUSADE AGAINST SCIENCE (2007).
It is instructive to remember that around the time of the American Revolutionary War, Tom Paine denounced organized religion in no uncertain terms. And yet organized religion still exists today.
Now, the creation stories that Professor Wilson mentions are obviously expressions of the human imagination.
But Professor Wilson cannot imagine how the transcendent divine ground of being (also known as God) could possibly have created the cosmos, including the sweep of evolution. Therefore, Professor Wilson concludes that there is no God. How's that for impeccable logic?
Of course the reason why Professor Wilson cannot imagine how God could have created the cosmos, including evolution, is deeply connected with his theory of evolution -- and how evolution has worked over the course of time. By definition, all adaptations in his theory of evolution are random. Therefore, the possibility of deliberate designs that Professor Wilson claims characterize the religious worldview and the creation stories involving a purported creator God. See how he works with disjunctive logic?
In addition, Professor Wilson repeatedly refers to "intelligent self-understanding."
In his major philosophical treatise INSIGHT: A STUDY OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING (1957; 5th ed. 1992), Bernard Lonergan, S.J., discusses intelligent self-understanding. However, unlike Professor Wilson, Lonergan does not subscribe to a materialistic philosophical position. On the contrary, he vigorously embraces a non-materialistic philosophical position.
Yes, to be sure, there is a pronounced disjunction between a materialistic philosophical position and a non-materialistic philosophical position.
Arguably an agnostic philosophical position involves sitting on the fence, figuratively speaking, between those two mutually exclusive philosophical positions.
But here's the important question: Would secularists who have worked out what Professor Wilson styles as an intelligent self-understanding differ in significant ways from theists who have worked out the kind of intelligent self-understanding that Lonergan describes?
Professor Wilson stresses the importance of informed and enlightened decision making that is responsible.
Lonergan stresses the importance of informed and enlightened decision making that is responsible.
Thus, broadly, Professor Wilson's conceptual construct of intelligent self-understanding appears not to be inconsistent with Lonergan's conceptual construct of intelligent self-understanding.
However, the devil is in the details involved in concrete decision making.
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