True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
E. O. WILSONTrue character arises from a deeper well than religion.
E. O. WILSONReligious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
E. O. WILSONAnts make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.
E. O. WILSONScience and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
E. O. WILSONAnts are the dominant insects of the world, and they’ve had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.
E. O. WILSONAn individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being’s, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
E. O. WILSONIn some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an
E. O. WILSONPersist! The world needs all you can give.
E. O. WILSONNature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
E. O. WILSONIn 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. WILSONJehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.
E. O. WILSONIt’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
E. O. WILSONA 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.
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.
E. O. WILSONReligious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
E. O. WILSONCompeting is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.
E. O. WILSON