This site presents information and links designed to introduce religious naturalism (RN) to those who are not yet familiar with it. And, for those who respect science as a foundation for understanding what is real, it provides resources for exploring an orientation that appreciates the mystery, order, and beauty in the world and the spiritual part of ourselves, .
Menu options, shown above and to the right, identify topics that can be examined. And, every week or two, as is shown below, a new featured topic is presented on this home page. The current topic begins at the beginning – to review a modern story of our origins that has a grandeur that matches and, in some eyes, may exceed the biblical description, and has the added benefit that, based on all we’re able to understand, is also real.
Origins
The modern story of the origin of the cosmos and human beings is taught in science classes around the world. This has been described as a modern myth, the “epic of evolution.”
The broad outline of this story is familiar but, as a central point in a naturalist view, it bears retelling. The version below is by Carl Sagan*.
“For unknown ages after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the Big Bang, the Cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep, impenetrable darkness was everywhere, hydrogen atoms in the void.
Here and there denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing – hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was first kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens.
Deep in the stellar furnaces the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements, the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building materials of future planets and lifeforms.
Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generations of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form the planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early Earth.
Concealing and warming, the Earth released the methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together again into more and more complex forms, which dissolved in the early oceans.
After a time the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clays. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self-replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self-replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun.
Single-celled plants evolved, and life began to generate its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free-living forms banded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One-celled organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems. Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear.
Plants and animals dissolved that the land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early oceans coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning.
And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants, and fire and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars.
These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.”
An important part of this story is emergence, in which relationships among component may produce properties that go beyond what is present in the parts. For example:
- Water has qualities different from those of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
- A living cell has qualities beyond those of its molecules.
- Multicellular beings are capable of actions and intentions that are not possible in single cells.
- The human mind, with intelligence and consciousness, has properties that are not present in nerve cells in the brain.
With these and many other examples, the sum is not just greater than the parts; it is fundamentally different from the parts. Or, as some have put it, “something more” results from “nothing but” when particular combinations and relationships result in new qualities.
As Loyal Rue explained it, emergence is not about “new kind of stuff”, but “new relationships between components that are already there”; “when existing parts enter into new dynamical relations, new realities appear.” As Philip Clayton put it, “The nature of the world is such that it produces, and perhaps must produce, continually more complex realities in a process of ongoing creativity”.
Links
Video
Big History
…..The Universe
……….The Big Bang
……….Formation of stars and galaxies
…..Our solar system and Earth
The history of our world in 18 minutes. David Christian. TED talk. April 2011.
Origins (NOVA series)
…..Back to the beginning
…..Earth is born
The Most Astounding Fact About The Universe, Neil DeGrasse Tyson
……(3 minute video; “We are part of this universe. . . The universe is in us”)
Journey of the Universe
Evolution Will Change How You See the World
Books
The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry.
Everybody’s Story: Wising Up to the Epic of Evolution. Loyal Rue.
A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing. Lawrence Krauss.
Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe (P.S.). Simon Singh.
The first three minutes. Steven Weinberg.
The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet. Robert M. Hazen.
Emergence
NOVA website: Emergence (video, examples, Q&A)
Emergence (wiki)
The Sacred Emergence of Nature. Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon
Beyond Reductionism – Reinventing the Sacred. Stuart Kauffman
Emergence of Life and human beings are examined from other pages:
…..Life
…..Being human
* Carl Sagan, in Cosmos, 1985, pages 337-338
.
For a direct link to the website of the
Religious Naturalist Association
click here.
Photo: Pauline Rosenberg