Our ancestors understood origins by extrapolating from their own experiences. how else could they have done it? So of course the universe was hatched from a cosmic egg or conceived in the sexual congress of a mother god and a father god, or, perhaps the latest from the creator's workshop, yet another flawed attempt. So, the universe was not much bigger than we see and not much older than our written or oral records and nowhere very different from places we already knew.

We've tended in our cosmologies to make things familiar, despite our best efforts, we've not been very inventive. In the West, heaven is placid and fluffy while hell is like the inside of a volcano. These different realms are governed by hierarchies of gods and devils. Monotheists talk about the king of kings. In every culture we've found something like our own political system ruling the universe. Few have found the similarity suspicious.


If you were to live two or three millennium ago it was perfectly acceptable to believe this, it was what the most learned among us taught without qualification. However, we have learned much since then and to continue further is willful disregard of the evidence and a flight from self-knowledge. We long to be here for a purpose, but, despite much self-deception, none is evident.

What do we really look for in religion? Salvation? Comfort? Therapy? Fear? If the species is to survive the next hundred years do we need a reassuring fable or an understanding of our actual circumstances?

We are burdened under the cumulative weight of the debunking of our conceits. We're Johnny-Come-Latelies, we live in the cosmic boondocks, we emerged from microbes and muck, apes are our cousins, we have yet to gain full control of our thoughts and feelings, there are most likely very different and much more intelligent beings elsewhere and on top of all that we are ****ing our planet and ourselves.

The trap door beneath our feet swings open. We are in bottomless free fall. Whom among us cannot sympathize with those who would prefer to shut their eyes and pretend they are safe and snug at home? That the fall is only a bad dream.

However, once we overcome our fear of being tiny we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome universe. One that surpasses - in time and space - the tidy anthropocentric presidium of our ancestors. We gaze across billions of years to shortly after the most recent big bang, we plumb the fine structure of matter and the interior of our own star. We redefine agriculture, without which most of us would starve. We create vaccines that save the lives of billions. We communicate at the speed of light and whip around the world in an hour and a half. We have sent hundreds of probes and ships to the cosmos and other planets.

How much more satisfying had life been if we were placed in a custom garden where everything we needed was there for us? There is a celebrated story in Western tradition called The Garden Story. God places his two naive children there and gives them everything they could ever need, all was there for their use. Well, almost everything. There was a particular tree which was forbidden to us. The Tree of Knowledge. Of course, being children in a sense, we partook from that tree. We couldn't help ourselves. We were starving for knowledge - created hungry, you might say. That was the origin of all our troubles. We found out too much. The gardeners became exiles and angels were set as sentries at the garden's gates to keep us from returning. Occasionally, we long for that life, but, to me that's maudlin and sentimental. We would not have been happy as ignorant for long.

We long for a parent to guide us, comfort us, to save us from our foolish choices, but, knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far the hard truth than a reassuring fable.

If we crave some cosmic purpose then let's find a worthy goal.

-A&C S

Our ancestors were technologically disadvantaged.
The smarter and more evolved we get the less we need a god as a crutch or a scapegoat.