Thousands of years before the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason), men and women, priests and priestesses, profoundly ignorant of our world as we know it today, attempted to explain the cause, purpose, and nature of life and the universe.
Often claiming “divine revelation,” i.e., communicating with gods and supernatural entities, as their source of inspiration, knowledge, and authority – and no science – they created gods, fabricated creation stories, wrote texts, and created and formed into fiercely tribal religions with rules and theatrical rituals, costumes, and music.
This all occurred long before the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.
Recall that Hinduism began about 6,000 years ago, Judaism about 4,000 years ago, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism about 2,600 years ago, Christianity about 2,000 years ago, and Islam about 1,400 years ago.
This was long before the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, when in the 16th to 18th centuries – about 300 to 500 years ago – mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, and anatomy emerged and set forth a range of ideas based on reason as the source of authority and legitimacy.
Religious creeds, dogma, and doctrine were questioned, and religious authority challenged, all for very good reasons.
Today, we do not need “divine revelation” to explain the cause, purpose, and nature of life and the universe.
The Big Bang Theory, the prevailing cosmological model for the observable universe, is the generally accepted theory for the cause of the universe.
The purpose of the universe?
We don’t have a clue that the universe has a purpose.
All the planets, stars, and galaxies that are observable, “the observable universe,” represent only about 4% of the universe.
When we look at the sky on a particularly clear and starry night and see many stars, we think we are looking at the universe.
In fact, we are looking at only about 2,500 stars of the 200 to 400 billion in the Milky Way Galaxy.
And, the Milky Way Galaxy is only one of the estimated trillions of galaxies in the universe.
And, the universe is growing larger at a rate in excess of the speed of light, in excess of 186,000 miles per second, in excess of a billion miles per hour!
And, the observable universe is generating an estimated 4,800 new solar systems every second!
That’s 275 million more solar systems every day, just in 4% of the universe!
Astronomers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand estimate that in the Milky Way Galaxy, there are one-hundred billion habitable Earthlike planets. One-hundred billion! Just in the Milky Way, one of trillions of galaxies.
The purpose of all of this? We don’t have a clue.
What about the nature of the universe?
That’s another story.
It is here where the enigma unravels and the nature of life – a nonreligious understanding of sacredness – is revealed: that in life which, at our peril, we cannot violate, damage, dishonor, or destroy.
Which means in our relationships with ourself (health), each other, and our biosphere (the sum of all ecosystems).