Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
E. O. WILSONWilling to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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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.
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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.
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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
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Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They’re the cemetery workers.
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Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
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It’s obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life – for 8 billion or more people – without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
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This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
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Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice.
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It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
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The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.
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We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.
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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.
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Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
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In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.
E. O. WILSON