éabhlóid Dé

Thiar i Mí Iúil bhí An Cás ar son Dé á phlé ag Tadhg, le Richrad Dawkins ar thaobh amháin agus Karen Armstrong ar an taobh eile, via a gcuid leabhar. Tá leabhar nua eile tosaithe agam, The Evolution of God le Robert Wright. Níl mórán de léite agam fós, ach is féidir liom a rá go bhfuil ard-mheas agam ar Wright cheana féin. Seo sliocht gairid as an dara caibidil:

No doubt the trance state reached during hours of dancing is a result of, among other things, the rhythmic shocks delivered to the base of the brain, as many as 60,000 shocks in one dance session by the estimate of the anthropologist Melvin Konner. But that doesn't steal the possibility of truth from the experience Konner himself had while dancing with the !Kung, “that ‘oceanic’ feeling of oneness with the world.” The opposite of this experience -- our everyday sense of wary separation from all but a few kin and trusted friends -- is a legacy of natural selection, no more and no less. It's been good at steering genes into the next generation, and thus must have in some sense faithfully reflected some features of the social landscape, but it doesn't necessarily capture the whole picture. It has been, in a sense, strategically “true,” but that doesn't make it morally or metaphysically true.