Dear Sir/Madam,

Understanding the animal roots of human behaviour is not just fascinating, but of urgent existential importance (Prime Numbers: What Science and Crime Have in Common, July 27, 2003).

We are not fallen beings, as the Bible and church teaching would have us believe, but animals with the spark and potential of divine awareness, which enabled us to replace our animal perception and understanding of the Earth being stationary at the centre of the universe with that of modern astronomy.

Now we must replace a materialistic, growth-dependent, greed- and fear-driven economy, rooted in our primitive animal nature, which is causing us to plunder our planet in pursuit of non-sustainable, more animal than human, lifestyles, with a "sustainable" (i.e. far less materialistic) economy and lifestyles, rooted in our more human (enlightened) than animal nature. 

Otherwise, we will perish.