snip....
A new secular -- but not secularist -- world view needs no teleology. It just has to be big, powerful, attractive, and exciting, as big, powerful, attractive, and exciting as the religious find their own religion to be. E.g., Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium -- which works just fine for social history, not just biological history -- doesn't come with any teleology whatsoever. -- Yoshie
***********
How deterministic to equate Gould's study of the rise and fall of snail populations in terms of refining evolutionary biology theory as punctuated equilibrium theory by equating this hard science concept with a similar deterministic pattern for social history. Problem is though, it is not entirely true, see: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2006.00179.x