3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it’s Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn’t intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
3 December 2020 E. O. Wilson A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
