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<div class=Section1><pre><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>“</span></font>A staunch evolutionist himself, [Dylan Evans] is nevertheless highly critical of such modern giants as Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson.”<o:p></o:p></pre><pre><font
size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Edward Wilson quotes: <a
href="http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/eow.html">http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/eow.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>[PT interviewer is <b><font
color="#3333ff"><span style='color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>Jill Neimark]<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></span></font></pre>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>PT: You call
yourself a deist. What do you mean by that?</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>EO: A deist is a person
who’s willing to buy the idea that some creative force determined the
parameters of the universe when it began.</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>PT: And a theist
is someone who believes that God not only set the universe in motion, but is
still actively involved.</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>EO: But
I’ve been doing a kind of Pascalian waffling as a deist. I think
being an atheist is to claim knowledge you cannot have. And to say
you’re agnostic is to arrogantly dismiss the whole thing by saying that
it’s unknowable. But a provisional deist is someone like myself who
leaves it open. You see, evolutionary biology leaves very little room for
a theistic God. I’d like it to be otherwise. Nothing would delight
me more than to have real proof of a transcendental plane.</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>PT: Why?</span></font></b>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>EO: If the
neurobiologists came through with enough evidence and said, There is another
plane, and it is quite conceivable that the individual essence somehow
implanted there is immortal, wouldn’t you be happy? I’d be
very, very happy. I’d congratulate my colleagues when they went to <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Stockholm</st1:place></st1:City> to get the
Nobel Prize, and I’d be personally relieved.</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>PT: Relieved of
what?</span></font></b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><b><font size=3 color="#3333ff" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#3333FF;font-weight:bold'>EO: It would mean
that human existence really is exalted and that immortality is a prospect,
providing this God is not a God of irony and cruelty who is going to send
everybody the other way. That reminds me of an argument I like to
give. Maybe God is sorting the saved from the damned, but the saved will
be those who have the intellectual courage to press on with skepticism and
materialism. They would be His most independent and courageous creations,
would they not? Particularly the ones who faced the charges of heresy.</span></font></b>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<pre><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></pre></div>
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