The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior. Mankind has produced 100, 000 religions. It is an illusion to think that scientific humanism and learning will dispel religious belief. Men would rather believe than know.. A kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest has occurred with religions.. The ecological principle called Gause's law holds that competition is maximal between species with identical needs.. Even submission to secular religions such as Communism and guru cults involve willing subordination of the individual to the group. Religious practices confer biological advantage. The mechanisms of religion include (1) objectification (the reduction of reality to images and definitions that are easily understood and cannot be refuted), (2) commitment through faith (a kind of tribalism enacted through self-surrender), (3) and myth (the narratives that explain the tribe's favored position on the earth, often incorporating supernatural forces struggling for control, apocalypse, and millennium). Edward O. Wilson
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  4. I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance,... - C. Joybell C.
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More Quotes By Edward O. Wilson
  1. There is no better high than discovery.
  2. People would rather believe than know.
  3. I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle.
  4. Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled. The question it poses, of universal and orderly materialism, is the most important that can be asked in philosophy and religion.
  5. Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve...
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