If BioLogos is serious about exploring “evolutionary religious studies” (as one moderator jpm recently said it was new to him), since it hasn’t been discussed much at BioLogos, an opportunity for discovery is near around the corner.
Two presentations this coming week will be held on “Religion and the Evolution of Cooperation” in the recent series by D.S. Wilson. https://thisviewoflife.com/evolutionary-science-and-sociology/
The papers, which are the basis for the presentations, can be found linked here:
https://thisviewoflife.com/debate-nothing-in-sociology-makes-sense-except-in-the-light-of-evolution/
Paper 1: https://thisviewoflife.com/for-gods-sake-whats-all-this-fuss-about-a-virus/
Paper 2: https://thisviewoflife.com/debate-nothing-in-sociology-makes-sense-except-in-the-light-of-evolution/
To be sure, I believe this stuff is about as wrong-headed and wrong-hearted as a sociologist can get. For a “religious” person to accept ERS is tantamount to rejecting their “religion”, since ERS concludes that “religion” is man-made, and that “God” is an invention of humanity, not the source of religion.
BioLogos Moderator Matthew Pevarnik wrote, regarding the Evolution Institute’s https://evolution-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/2Social-Darwinism_Publication.pdf: “I think this publication by the Evolution Institute is fairly interesting when discussing such topics:”
Let’s look more closely to see if Matthew might be “barking up the wrong tree” about what he finds “fairly interesting” in Wilson & Johnson’s proposal (neither Wilson nor Johnson are trained in sociology, mind you, but this doesn’t stop them from putting forward a “new social Darwinism”). As a sociologist, I find D.S. Wilson’s work and that coming out of his Evolution Institute to be both often anti-religious (in a subtle way, right?), as well as dehumanizing. Matthew’s physics background seems to “interpret” Wilson’s “new social Darwinism” differently. Which view of ERS and “social Darwinism” makes more sense to people here? Does it even matter if BioLogos is against “evolutionism” if it gives ERS a “free pass”?
Welcome comments from anyone who attends and listens for themselves. Let’s hear if this “ERS” is such a wise idea for BioLogos to warm up to, or better to be cautious about and potentially reject.
NB: Written by an atheist, not a creationist: “New Atheists believe that religion is a pseudo-scientific explanation of the natural world that is replaced by modern science, most importantly the idea of evolution , which is applied well beyond the confines of the natural world to explain society, culture, politics, ethics, economics, whatever. In that sense it becomes so vast in it’s explanatory power that it becomes something like a religious myth . So that’s the first religious function it performs: explaining where the universe came from, and the life that exists within it.” - Stephen LeDrew (Author of The Evolution of Atheism , Oxford University Press, 2015, https://www.canadianatheist.com/2018/02/ledrew/)
