The latest issue of Nature (21 Sept.) has a review of E.O. Wilson's book "The Creation" by paleontologist Simon Conway Morris. His comments include:
"[Wilson's plan] is utimately a thinly disguised programme to hijack religious energy and divert it into the secular arena."
"Such a pantheistic agenda has not the remotest chance of working, but it also reveals a monumental misapprehension of what religion is actually trying to do."
"[Wilson's programme]...is underpinned by an incoherent metaphysics."
"The failure of his pantheistic agenda lies in the recurrent inability of materialists to understand that the decision to protect the biosphere can only derive from an ethical imperative that is itself independent of the natural world."
Given my respect for S.C. Morris's work, this review doesn't exactly make me want to run out and read the book. But despite the pointed quotes, Morris also manages to show respect for Wilson (even as he skewers him in that oh-so-polite British way).
Karl
***************
Karl V. Evans
cmekve@aol.com
________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Mon Sep 25 13:03:59 2006
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Mon Sep 25 2006 - 13:03:59 EDT