Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
initiative is left to man to rightly moderate his natural tendencies in the
pursuit of being for its own sake. And in this sense one's existence is
one's own responsibility and depends on one's causal initiative as an
ultimate response to Being or Nothingness.”
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Put ethically, Wolter, says,
“Right reason also recognizes that our self-perfection, even through
union with God in love, is not of supreme value. It enables man, in short,
to recognize that the drive for self-perfection paradoxically must not go
unbridled if it is to achieve its goal, but must be channeled lest it destroy
the harmony of the universe intended by God.”
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What is most helpful about this perspective is that while it affirms self-
perfection, ultimately such perfection is not an end in itself. To be all
that we can be, we must step beyond the confines of self and actualize
that most free of all acts, an act of love. For only then do we find our-
selves open to the depths of reality. And in the steadfast adherence to
that beloved, we realize the fullness of freedom.
Religion
I now turn to the general topic of religion, particularly with respect to
the idea of its very possibility. In exploring the foundations that could
make such a reality possible, I will also examine the adequacy of the
philosophy of scientific materialism in capturing the sufficiency of matter
as well as attitudes about religion expressed by various authors.
Scientific Materialism
Although the phrase “scientific materialism”
appears late in Wilson's
On Human Nature
, it is a key principle that
provides the overarching framework for many of the ideas in socio-
biology. Scientific materialism, according to Wilson, is “the view that all
phenomena in the universe, including the human mind, have a material
basis, are subject to the same physical laws, and can be most deeply
understood by scientific analysis.” The core of scientific materialism
is the evolutionary epic whose minimum claims are “that the laws of
the physical sciences are consistent with those of the biological and
social sciences and can be linked in chains of causal explanation; that
life and mind have a physical basis; that the world as we know it has
evolved from earlier worlds obedient to the same laws; and that the
visible universe today is everywhere subject to these materialist
explanations.”
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