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Every culture has a central story – of who we are and how we came to be. In Judeo-Christian religion, this is described in the book of Genesis. In religious naturalism, it is the story of emergence and evolution. This begins with the Big Bang, leading to formation of stars and planets and the emergence of life on Earth and human beings. It shows an order and beauty in the workings of physical world, and it gives a sense of our place in a vast and ancient cosmos..
As Loyal Rue put it, this “has the power to engage the deep structures of human nature and to transform how we think and what we do. . . .”
“This story shows us in the deepest possible sense that we are all sisters and brothers – fashioned from the same stellar dust, energized by the same star, nourished by the same planet, endowed with the same genetic code, and threatened by the same evils. This story, more than any other, humbles us before the magnitude and complexity of creation. Like no other story it bewilders us with the improbability of our existence, astonishes us with the interdependence of all things, and makes us feel grateful for the lives we have.”
A version of this story is shown at the Origins page at this website.
Some additional resources are shown below.
Big History website
Human origins (American Museum of Natural History website)
Epic of Evolution (Wikipedia)
Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred, by Stuart Kauffman
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Religious Naturalism
Taking Nature to Heart
A worldview grounded in science that provides a foundation for a way of being in the world that is both inspiring and personally rewarding.