We are Part of the Cosmos
Charles Darwin's insights into natural selection have shown that there are no evolutionary pathways leading unerringly from simple forms to Man; rather, evolution proceeds by fits and starts, and most life forms lead to evolutionary dead-ends. We are the products of a long series of biological accidents. In the cosmic perspective there is no reason to think that we are the first or the last or the best.
These realizations of the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are profound – and, to some, disturbing. But they bring with them compensatory insights. We realize our deep connectedness with other life forms, both simple and complex. We know that the atoms that make us up were synthesized in the interiors of previous generations of dying stars. We are aware of our deep connection, both in form and in matter, with the rest of the universe. The cosmos revealed to us by the new advances in astronomy and biology is far grander and more awesome than the tidy world of our ancestors. And we are becoming a part of it, the cosmos as it is, not the cosmos of our desires.
Notes:
As it is, not as we wish it to be.
Folksonomies: science religion wonder
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Charles Darwin (0.953096): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
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Biology (0.728033): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
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Carl Sagan's cosmic connection