Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
metaphysical quest is an evolutionary one: religious belief can be seen as
adaptive. The submission of humans to a perceived higher power, in the
case of religion, derives from a more general tendency for submission
behavior which has shown itself to be adaptive. By submitting to a
stronger force, animals attain a stable situation.”
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In other words,
Wilson here used ethological insight to argue that we cannot eliminate
our metaphysical quest—it is part of our nature. For Wilson, the choice
is between empiricism and transcendentalism, whether philosophical or
religious. His own preference is the empiricist view because it is objec-
tive—that is, scientific. It proceeds by “exploring the biological roots of
moral behavior, and explaining their material origins and biases.”
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And
ultimately, the evolutionary myth of origins will replace the religious one.
Yet Wilson leans toward deism, since he states that there could exist
a cosmological God whose existence could be proved by astrophysics.
On the other hand, “a biological God, one who directs organic evolu-
tion and intervenes in human affairs ...is increasingly contravened by
biology and the brain sciences.” For all this, though, Wilson says we
need our transcendental beliefs: “
We cannot live without them
. People
need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose in one
form or another, however intellectualized.”
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A transcendental form of
this narrative neither will nor can endure, however, for it eventually will
not withstand scientific scrutiny. Our guiding narrative will therefore
need to be taken from “the material history of the universe and the
human species.” But that is not to our or religion's disadvantage, since
as Wilson adds
the true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any
religious epic. Material reality discovered by science already possesses more
content and grandeur than all religious cosmologies combined. The continuity
of the human line has been traced through a period of deep history a thousand
times older than that conceived by the Western religions. Its study has brought
new revelations of great moral importance. It has made us realize that
Homo
sapiens
are far more than a congeries of tribes and races. We are a single gene
pool from which individuals are drawn in each generation and into which they
are dissolved the next generation, forever united as a species by heritage and a
common future. Such are the conceptions, based on fact, from which new inti-
mations of immortality can be drawn and a new mythos evolved.
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So although disagreeing with Dawkins about the need for raising “why”
questions, Wilson essentially lands in the same place: metaphysical
