Thursday, May 17, 2012

Hey Mr. Wilson: Your tribal theory of religion is a lot of bunk!


The Cardinal Newman Society Blog is reporting that:

"DePaul University, the largest Catholic university in America, has invited one of the foremost population control advocates who once called Christianity “the most dangerous of devotions” to speak at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and College of Science and Health commencement ceremony.


E.O. Wilson, a Harvard professor and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize who once called humans “an environmental abnormality,” is scheduled to speak at DePaul University’s commencement on June 10th.

He is one of a number of prominent people who will be speaking on campus that day. This is yet another scandalous invitation from a Catholic institution. Wilson once cited as one of the “reasons for optimism” for environmentalists was that “despite entrenched traditions and religious beliefs, the desire to use contraceptives in family planning is spreading.”

In his book The Diversity of Life, Wilson wrote:

'The time has come to speak more openly of a population policy…By this I mean not just capping the growth when the population hits the wall, as in India and China, but a policy based on a rational solution of this problem.'

Wilson has said many times that he doesn’t believe in God but insists he’s not an atheist. He did, however, argue in the online Salon Magazine that “religious belief itself is an adaptation” of evolution. And on top of that, Wilson singles out Christianity as “the most dangerous of devotions.”

He wrote in his book Consilience, The Unity of Knowledge:

'The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured — especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.'

Why a Catholic institution would give a platform to a population control advocate who blasts Christianity as “dangerous” is unfathomable." (See full post here).

Edward Wilson, who is connected with the Earth Charter [see my previous posts on this demonic iniative], subscribes to the Social Theory to explain the origin of religion.  He has been quoted as having said that, 'Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.  Religion is intensely tribalistic.  A devout Christian or Muslim doesn't say that one religion is as good as another.  It gives them faith in the particular group to which they belong and that set of beliefs and moral views." (See here).

But how could a devout Christian say that one religion is as good as another?  That would be the same as saying, "I think error and truth are equally good."  Why in heaven's name would anyone profess a religion that they were not absolutely sure was the true religion?  Would such a profession of faith be honest?  Of course not.  Thus, Mr. Wilson's objection is idiotic.  As is his explanation for the origin of religion.  Responding to the Tribalistic or Social Theory of the origin of religion, Mgsr. Paul J. Glenn, Ph.D., S.T.D., explains that according to this theory, "Primitive men, living in groups, came under the dominance of group-conscience.  They developed a sense of unity in their group or tribe that made them 'herd animals,' and they grew more and more slow to venture upon any procedure not sanctioned by the group.  To such men group-existence was a thing different from, and superior to, individual existence.  It was but natural that they should 'project' their group-unity or group-spirit and view it mentally as a kind of high power.  From this it was only a step to the deification of group-unity, group-spirit, group-power.  As society developed, however, the strong sense of group-unity slackened; men emerged into a clearer consciousness and appreciation of their individuality.  Still, the old idea of a superior power, a god or gods, endured.  The scope of this religious notion was much narrowed and adapted to man's new consciousness of his individual self, and there arose the concept of individual gods.  Among primitives there were many outstanding men, leaders, distinctly individual.  Our own American Indians give us a type of primitive civilization, and their brief recorded history is full of the names of great chiefs who were not only warriors, but orators, counsellors of ripe wisdom, some of them inventors of forms of writing for their tribal dialects.  The social theory [which Edward Wilson promotes] contradicts historical fact, richly increased in our own times by ethnological research, which gives us clear evidence that primitive peoples were not dull masses of witless herd animals.  The basic fallacy of this theory is that it makes the individual man among primitives a nonentity, a unit that counts for nothing.  There is no shadow of evidence for the assertion of this fallacious notion; its reason for existence lies in the fact that it suits the theory!" (Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion, pp. 127-128, Tan Books and Publishers).

Edward Wilson is a Darwinist, a materialist.  But as Dr. Peter Kreeft has said, "...if materialism is true, if the soul is only the brain, if there is no spirit, no human soul and no God, then the brain has been programmed by mere chance.  All the programming our brains have received, through heredity (genetics) and environment (society), is ultimately only unintelligent, undesigned, random chance, brute facts, physical causes, not logical reasons.  Therefore materialism cannot be true.  It refutes itself.  It destroys its own credentials.  If the brain is nothing but blind atoms, we have no reason to trust it when it tells us about anything, including itself and atoms."

Edward Wilson is a mental midget with regard to philosophical matters.  I'm sure he'll fit right in at DePaul University.  The school largely abandoned serious thought a long time ago.


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