Religion will be the death of us all
By Mark Morford on February 3, 2015 3:00 AM
Here’s what’s sure to be a popular idea, widely and thoughtfully accepted throughout the land, calmly discussed during the next presidential debate because America is nothing if not full of sagely educated, spiritually curious beings who increasingly understand the fatal shortcomings of false dogma and blind belief.
Here is the quite brilliant entomologist, author and naturalist E.O. Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard, myriad awards, two-time Pulitzer winner, intellectual heir to Darwin, more than a dozen books, etcetera and so on, discussing in this New Scientist interview the second in a trilogy (!) of new books he’s writing (the man is 85), about the nature and future of the human animal. His newest? The awesomely titled “The Meaning of Human Existence.” I mean, when you’re 85, why be coy?
Wilson’s conclusion about the current state of humanity? Not so great. Not only is humankind driving thousands of creatures both large and small, land and sea to a shockingly rapid extinction – far more quickly and more cruelly than nature would ever allow otherwise – but we have the bizarre chutzpah to believe that we, ourselves, are somehow exempt. We couldn’t possibly be on that list. Could we?
This is the great and terrible human irony, no? We think we’re different, protected, too special to fail. We’ve convinced ourselves that we are immune to the vicious, accelerated cycle of brutal extinction that we ourselves brought to bear. And Wilson, along with myriad scientists and thinkers like him, is here to remind us: Guess again, selfish biped.
To be clear: Wilson is not suggesting we’re headed for fiery apocalypse. Rather, he shows how we are systematically, methodically wiping out our own habitat, destroying the razor-thin biosphere that holds it all together, casually decimating all the delicate, complex ecosystems that both created us and keeps us alive. “Death by a thousand cuts,” he says. What’s worse: We can’t seem to stop.
And why? Wilson identifies a single, overarching culprit, the main reason we’re on the fun train to self-extermination, and can’t/won’t get off.
It’s not climate change. Not overpopulation. Not war, or disease, or resource abuse. Those are all very real, but they’re also merely the consequence, the end result of centuries of blind, dogmatic adherence to, well, to God.
Continues here