Q: How does Edward O Wilson view theology? How would a “consilience” approach in general explain supernatural claims?

Our brain may have taken millions of years to evolve in such a way, but it has only taken a couple hundred years for religion to be challenged by modern scientific knowledge. And this new knowledge is in conflict with the way our brain is genetically programmed. Theology has to deal with this conflict, and, Wilson says, there are two kinds of theology.

“There's the world of the fundamentalists who have a set of absolute beliefs that do not need to be justified. They're armored against any logical argument or evidence. If logic seems compelling, it's the voice of the devil.

Then there is the theology of the searchers, the thinkers about the meaning of human existence. They're trying to accommodate pretty well-rounded views of how the real world works without surrendering the mystery of the Almighty and the need for communal liturgy."

Consilience takes a similar approach to the searchers. Given a religious/theological observance, they will hunt for logic, processes, chain reactions, and simpler explanations. That is how consilience would approach any observance, religious or otherwise, attempting to effectively and accurately reduce the incident to a more ‘sense’ driven discipline of learning.

"The central idea of the consilience world view is that all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of the social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics."

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