Deaf Man in a Concert Hall

Wilson was like the deaf man at a concert hall who concluded the audience was there because they like the seats. Descartes and Newton worked for true consilience, science for God, whereas Wilson worked for illusory consilience to dispense with God.

Looking back at scientolatry of the Great Purification it appears as an epitaph for the Old Humanity. It was a summary of predictive knowledge and a hope that science would free humanity from the need for faith in God. It maintained that religion was superstition, an antidote for fear, and a way for people to feel superior

Humanity finally had some interesting theories, tools, and knowledge. Instead of using these advances to strengthen natural piety and spiritual longing, scientolatry forged them into a religion substitute.

We have many documents from that time, some even in the original treepaper. I have one of the three known treepaper copies of Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge. It is a small book with voluptuously soft paper full of drolleries of reincarnation which they did not understand. Wilson was an evolutionary biologist born into an American Christian biblicalist sect whose peculiar conceit was to deny the second narrative in the theme of creation, the evolution of forms.

Denying the evolution of forms was a last stand of the demagogic priestcraft in America. Of course, compared with the worst of priestcraft throughout the Old Humanity, it was pretty harmless. I suspect these Christians focused their unnatural theism on evolution because it allowed them a silly self-importance without jeopardizing access to the benefits of science. Actually, the South Baptists were harmless compared with some Christian sects that denied medical care to their children on religious grounds.

Much of this odd reaction of unnatural theism against evolution theory was in response to the work of Charles Darwin, the 19th-century British naturalist whose detailed study of the matter changed the course of science. His books, Origin of Species and The Descent of Man were humanity's first thorough and reasoned arguments supporting the idea that forms evolve. These books rank among humanity's greatest accomplishments. History is a dance whose steps can only be fully learned in hindsight. Initially, Darwin's work was violently decried as being anti-God. Strange. After being taken for granted in much of Western intellectual life for at least two thousand years, Darwin's beautiful compilation of evidence was suddenly decried as the worst attack on human happiness since mosquitoes. Wilson understandably sought shelter in the newly built sanctuary of science.

By the time Wilson was born the imaginary conflict between between religionism and science had been won by science.

Science gained the upper hand in that histrionic struggle because of the miraculous advances in knowledge. Dusty desiccated scripture could not stand against knowledge that made life incomparably safer, happier and longer for millions of people. No ancient parable could overcome a grateful humanity released at last from the anguish of common childhood death. No carping preacher could stop people from reading and learning and traveling to new places and hearing new music and seeing marvelous works of art—all brought to the common person as a direct result of scientific advances.

When some scientists of the late 20th century proposed their practices and knowledge as the basis of a nontheistic secular religion there was justice in their claims that science had done more than social religion to improve everyday life for humanity. Their arguments were further strengthened by the fact that the most pious countries were often the most backward, although this phenomena had more to do with the failure of those countries to separate governmental and religious authority.

When The Awakener removed ¾ of the unnatural sanskaras in the Great Purification we became happier, freer and more tranquil than the Old Humanity had ever been. We are no longer beset with war and violence. We no longer hoard possessions or exploit each other. But we also no longer thirst for truth like they did. Their suffering inspired their quest. Their heavier sanskaric burden obscured the truth so they searched more intensely for it. Why all this suffering? was their perpetual question, and What can we do to alleviate it? was their perpetual compassionate Godfulness, with or without the direct involvement of social religion.

The voices of great scientists and artists of the Old Humanity speak to us of the transcendence found through their work. Artistic and scientific beauty carried them to the boundaries of the eternal. And their consciousness was restricted to the sense of only living once, of only having one life in which to find the answer. Our living understanding of the third narrative removes our sense of urgency. We are much more patient.

Wilson's Consilience then was a typical late Old Humanity manifesto of that hope of having, if not triumphed over the eternal, at least of having reached its shore. He was about 70 years old when Consilience was published and it was a summary of what he had found as a scientist to answer the questions whence, whither, and what is the meaning of all this?

Scientific materialism was unable to answer those questions. In fact it was a retrogression from Truth. It was an ideology of nonknowing, anti-knowing, by denying faith is a form of knowledge. But the hope that science would heal the self-inflicted wounds of humanity was still touching and beautiful.

We know almost nothing of Wilson's private life apart from his writing, which is a good sign for an Old American. He seems to have lived a Christianoform life and was not particularly hefnerist (or we probably would know it). Wilson certainly did not understand that the dignity and moral tone of his life were based in the grace of the Avatar, and especially Christ. Wilson did not accept the divinity of the avatar or understand avataric cycles. If Wilson had heard of the Ancient One, he probably would have thought of Him as a charismatic, politically gifted person who attracted a cult following, which for epigenetic reasons developed into a religion.

They had an adage, "If your only tool is a hammer, everything is a nail." The only tool Wilson had was science and his apotheosis of science was evolutionary genetics. Therefore God and everybody else was a production of the human brain, which was in turn a result of genetics, and there was no truth independent of that particular organ.

During his lifetime it was typical of highly gifted people to leave their birthplace and families to do their work. This mode of spending large portions of one's life in different places among different people was due to the limitation of their technology but it was also due to the way they organized and conducted their work. I have spoken before about the enormous emphasis the Old Americans placed on work for money. It was one of the great motive forces of their lives. I have many times given my view that of all the practical effects of the Great Purification, perhaps the most impactful is that we do not work for money. It was normal for a scientist to move to a place far away from his home in order to pursue science. It is hard for us to imagine compartmentalizing our lives in such lonely ways.