Check out the second page of the comic that Neil Gaiman posts an FYE about:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/12/for-your-enjoyment.html OK, down to business:
Here is a chimera, a new and very odd species come shambling into our universe, a mix of Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology. The combination make the species unresponsive to the forces that count most for its own long-term survival".~E.O. Wilson, The Creation
Apparently biologist Richard Dawkins new book, The God Delusion, is a bestseller. My apartment-mate is reading it. Unlike prior books of Dawkins', which described biology, albeit sometimes with decidedly unapologetic arguments against religious objections to evolution, the current book seems to be a polemic
against religion's foibles.
In apparent contrast, another star biologist, E.O. Wilson, has written a book titled The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. Some chapters are written in the style of a letter to a Southern Baptist Pastor. Despite what Wilson says are irreconcilable differences, he maintains that he speaks "in a spirit of mutual respect and good will", sharing "many precepts of moral behavior". "Perhaps," he continues, it matters "insofar as it might still affect civility and good manners, [that they] are both Southerners".
Perhaps indeed; while Wilson repeatedly maintains that he is being respectful, much of the book goes on to lay out ecology and evolutionary biology, rather concisely, but in terms that seem to dispense with any literal reading of the Bible, "would God have been so deceptive as to salt the earth with so much misleading evidence?". I suppose it's a Southern thing that two people can completely disagree with each other with smiles on their face and respect in their handshakes?
Why bother? Well, the creation needs taking care of, and Wilson finds that religion and science are the most potent forces able to do so. Perhaps once the ashes of the straw man of intelligent design have been interred, the two forces can find commonality again: the world is wonderful in its workings and we humans really ought to be more respectful of it.
I haven't read it all yet, but Wilson, writing very much from the heart, seems to lose the thread of the argument at times. At such times it seems like yet another biologist writing in praise of nature and pleading for wise conservation. The word "creation" in the title seems to just be marketing -- what enables Wilson to publish redundant information.
But humans don't act on information alone. Al Gore's film succeeds because it invokes emotion. Wilson is very aware of this, and finds it to be the answer to why humans at putting creation in peril. Whence his fanciful quote of the wise alien observer of earth's evolutionary history perceiving H. sapiens as a chimera.
Wilson includes chapters on how to learn and teach biology (big, cross-disciplinary principles first, details to follow) and indeed a chapter on "how to raise a naturalist". Wilson tries for inspiration, and hits the mark at times: "Commit yourself. Returning to passion as the driver of learning, a teacher's dedication is most effective when expressed through both the art of teaching and the demonstrated love of the subject for its own sake... students seek their personal identity, but they also yearn for a cause larger than themselves... Nature is a theater for which such mental development is inherently suited".