[asa] E.O. Wilson "Baptist No More"

Here is a relevant and chilling quote from E.O. Wilson from "Consilience".

http://www.cnn.com/books/beginnings/9805/consilience/index.html

On a far more modest scale, I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste
the unification metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of
fundamentalist religion. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, laid backward
under the water on the sturdy arm of a pastor, been born again. I knew the
healing power of redemption. Faith, hope, and charity were in my bones, and
with millions of others I knew that my savior Jesus Christ would grant me
eternal life. More pious than the average teenager, I read the Bible cover
to cover, twice. But now at college, steroid-driven into moods of adolescent
rebellion, I chose to doubt. I found it hard to accept that our deepest
beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies of the eastern
Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered cognitive
dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of these people
and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama. It seemed to me that the Book
of Revelation might be black magic hallucinated by an ancient primitive. And
I thought, surely a loving personal God, if He is paying attention, will not
abandon those who reject the literal interpretation of the biblical
cosmology. It is only fair to award points for intellectual courage. Better
damned with Plato and Bacon, Shelley said, than go to heaven with Paley and
Malthus. But most of all, Baptist theology made no provision for evolution.
The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could
it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God? Might the
pastors of my childhood, good and loving men though they were, be mistaken?
It was all too much, and freedom was ever so sweet. I drifted away from the
church, not definitively agnostic or atheistic, just Baptist no more.

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Received on Mon Nov 26 23:02:35 2007