“We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed if we reach the point where we can't adapt to our own increasingly rapid adaptations. We run the risk of early extinction. So this certainly isn't a triumphalist story, but it is trying to get at what, in the very long run, leads to the amazing creatures that we are.” IfsTryingHumansLongStoriesRunningRiskCostCreaturesBe GoodLong RunsAdaptationExtinctionRapidsGreat Risk Author:Robert Neelly Bellah
“Yet Buddhism is four hundred years older than Christianity, and if it's not a universal religion I don't know what a universal religion is. There's also a strong focus on selectionism and the notion that religion plays a functional role in the evolutionary process. But religion is dysfunctional all the time, as well as functional. It's not so simple.” IfsKnowsYearsWellsPlayStrongProcessSimpleChristianityRolesFocusFourBuddhismHundredUniversalNotion Author:Robert Neelly Bellah
“One of the important things about religion is that it is a sphere which is partially protected from selection. Religious creativity occurs when people pull out of the whole selectivity issue. Becoming celibate - obviously you couldn't be less selective that that. Yes, selection is always in the background. But it's not always there in the foreground. If you don't understand that, you're missing a lot.” PeopleIfsImportantWholeReligiousCreativityIssuesMissingBecomingImportant ThingsBackgroundsSpheresProtectedSelectionSelectiveForeground Author:Robert Neelly Bellah
“We may wonder at the choice of Israel and Rome as the archetypes of the new nation, in view of the long history of suffering of the former and the decline of the latter. We may wonder that our ancestors over-looked the darker days of those earlier nations. They did not. They hoped to construct a republic on principles to sound that if we should decline in piety and public virtue we would meet the inexorable fate of nations, which are as but dust in the hands of God.” IfsShouldMayLongHandsSufferingChoicesNationsSoundViewsWonderPrinciplesVirtueFateIsraelDustFormerLatterRepublicRomeAncestorDeclineConstructsPietyHands Of GodArchetypeInexorable Author:Robert Neelly Bellah
