More Classic Quotes of
The Great Story
NOTE: If you have come to this page before viewing or downloading the PDF file of CLASSIC QUOTATIONS on the Great Story (by Aldo Leopold, Charles Darwin, Julian Huxley, Carl Sagan, Teilhard de Chardin, Maria Montessori, Loren Eiseley, Ursula Goodenough, Philip Hefner, and many more) then you have skipped the central text. That compilation is beautifully formatted, as it was published in the first issue of the Epic of Evolution. It is an excellent foundation for finding readings and "scriptural" material to support a host of efforts in the New Cosmology.
"Our bodies are made of stardust; our souls are made of stories." — Rev. Thomas Rhodes, Unitarian Universalist minister, 2007
"We have all heard some fundamentalist-minded person say something like, 'Don't tell me I'm related to monkeys.' The fact of the matter is that now that we have discovered DNA and its code, we know that we are not only related to monkeys, we are related to zucchini. So let's get over it." — Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, Unitarian Universalist minister, 2006
"It takes an entire universe to make an apple pie!" — Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980
"Evolution is not the enemy of ethics but its first source." — Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred, 2007 (p. 260)
"We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality." — Loren Eiseley, "Starthrower" in Unexpected Universe, 1969
"Our unique attributes evolved over a period of roughly 6 million years. They represent modifications of great ape attributes that are roughly 10 million years old, primate attributes that are roughly 55 million years old, mammalian attributes that are roughly 245 million years old, vertebrate attributes that are roughly 600 million years old, and attributes of nucleated cells that are perhaps 1,500 million years old. If you think it is unnecessary to go that far back in the tree of life to understand our own attributes, consider the humbling fact that we share with nematodes (tiny wormlike creatures) the same gene that controls appetite. At most, our unique attributes are like an addition onto a vast multiroom mansion. It is sheer hubris to think that we can ignore all but the newest room." — David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone, 2007
"The most extraordinary fact about public awareness of evolution is not that 50 percent don't believe it but that nearly 100 percent haven't connected it to anything of importance in their lives. The reason we believe so firmly in the physical sciences is not because they are better documented than evolution but because they are so essential to our everyday lives. We can't build bridges, drive cars, or fly airplanes without them. In my opinion, evolutionary theory will prove just as essential to our welfare and we will wonder in retrospect how we lived in ignorance for so long. — David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone, 2007
"The reassuring aspect of the portrait of the universe we now see drawn across the sky lies in its reconciliation of humanity with the material world. That we are part of the galaxy is literally true. The atoms of which we are formed were gathered together in the toilings of a galaxy; their fantastical assembly into living creatures was nourished by the warmth of a star in a galaxy; we look at the galaxies with a galaxy's eyes. To understand this is to give voice to the silent stars. Stand under the stars and say what you like to them. Praise or blame them, question them, pray to them, wish upon them. The universe will not answer. But it will have spoken." — Timothy Ferris, Galaxies, 1982
"The Great Story of our immense journey contains crucial lessons for guiding humanity safely through the dangers and confusions evident today. This grand epic will propel us forward in a spirit of expectant curiosity. We will place our trust not only in the Whole but also in our own species' capacity to serve as the vessel through which the evolutionary impulse is most active at this time." — Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution 2008, p. 277
"The error, indeed the tragedy, is arguing that biblical portrayals of God accurately reflect the nature of Ultimate Reality. No time or culture— even our own — should be burdened post hoc with the responsibility of shaping humanity's understanding and relationship to Ultimate Reality once and for all. Each people will describe and relate to the divine as best they can for their time and their conditions. Each generation honors its ancestry by taking from the past only that which is still lifegiving. Each generation provisions posterity by remaining open to new teachings and by advising those who shall follow to do the same." — Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution 2008, p. 323
"Nature is narrative to the core." — John Haught, 2002
"Only after we had absorbed Darwin and recalculated the age of the universe, after the vision of static forms of life had been replaced by a vision of fluid processes flexing across vast tracts of time, only then could we dare to guess the immensity of the symphony we are part of." — Christopher Bache, 2003
"Human consciousness is not merely an emergent phenomenon; it epitomizes the logic of emergence in its very form. To be human is to know what it feels like to be evolution happening." — Terrence Deacon, 2001
"From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust." — William James, Pluralistic Universe 1901
"The religious conservatives have an important point when they oppose presenting the subject [of evolution] in a manner that suggests it has been proved to be entirely determined by random, mechanistic events, but they are wrong to oppose the teaching of evolution itself. Its occurrence, on Earth and in the Universe, is by now indisputable. Not so its processes, however. In this, there is need for a nuanced approach, with evidence of creative ordering presented as intrinsic both to what we call matter and to the unfolding story, which includes randomness and natural selection." — Mary Coelho, Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood, 2002 (p. 184)
"There is no drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the tide." — Rachel Carson
"Life spirals laboriously upward to higher and even higher levels, paying for every step. Death was the price of the multicellular condition; pain the price of nervous integration; anxiety the price of consciousness." — Ludwig von Bertlanffy
"My portion of the great work, like that of any other person, creates its own synergy. My job is to be vigilant to the fact that the world creates neither coincidence nor accident — only opportunity. I need only have the courage to ask for what I need and the valor to accept it once it appears." — Ed Collins, pers. comm., 2003
"Our true ancestry is the emergent creativity of the universe. Our forebears were the great inventors who 'learned' how to coalesce hydrogen and helium into stars, to form planets, to sustain life first from mineral nutrients in the sea and later to capture delicious photons, to exploit oxygen for energy rather than be exterminated by it, to diversify via sexual reproduction, to form social groups for greater security and protection of offspring. We are the beneficiaries (and, admittedly, also the victims) of this narrative of emergence. Our 'companions' — abstract as this must sound to the uninitiated — are all of these progenitors. Indeed they are more than companions; they are family. From them we have inherited our corporeal shapes and movements, our body chemistry, and even some of our behavioral agendas." — John Brewer, pers. comm., 2004
"We humans are truly marvelous, adaptable creatures, products of an exciting and inspiring — even though often dangerous — evolutionary story, a story to be celebrated with conviction and enthusiasm even as we move on to new challenges." — Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria, Driven, 2002
"The dust of many crumbled cities settles over us like a forgetful doze, but we are older than those cities. We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again. That's how a young person turns toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans toward the breast, without knowing the secret of its desire, yet turning instinctively. Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are." — Rumi, "The Dream That Must Be Interpreted"
"We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." — Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980
"A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge. — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot 1994
"When you awaken to what I call the Authentic Self, which is the spiritual or evolutionary impulse, what begins to emerge is the dawning recognition of the fact that each one of us, at our highest level, is that Authentic Self, which is actually the same energy and intelligence that originally inspired the entire creative process. You begin to intuit and feel directly connected to the very impulse that initiated the whole event fourteen billion years ago and is driving it right now." — Andrew Cohen, 2006. (Click here for more Andrew Cohen quotes from his website. This quote is drawn from his "The Outer Reaches of the Big Bang.")
"It is my belief that we need a new transnational sustaining 'myth' that can impart value and respect. It is my further belief that we are coming to see our universe and life as creative, without a directing agency. Meaning emerges with life. If this view becomes widespread, it has the promise to become the sustaining myth we need to sustain in turn an emerging global civilization." — Stuart Kauffman, 2006
"Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. The value of science remains unsung by singers: you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age." — Richard Feynman
"One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures. Because of this ceaseless creativity, we typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward, as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the mandate of life itself. But the fact that we must live our lives forward into a ceaseless creativity that we cannot fully understand means that reason alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives. Reason, the center of the Enlightenment, is but one of the evolved, fully human means we use to live our lives. Reason itself has finally led us to see the inadequacy of reason. We must therefore reunite our full humanity. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know." — Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred, 2007
"The universe is a single reality — one long, sweeping spectacular process of interconnected events. The universe is not a place where evolution happens; it is evolution happening. It is not a stage on which dramas unfold; it is the unfolding drama itself. If ever there were a candidate for a universal story, it must be this story of cosmic evolution. . . 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. And not the least of all, it inspires us to express our gratitude to the past by accepting a solemn and collective responsibility for the future." — Loyal Rue, Everybody's Story, 1999
"I foresee a day in the not-too-distant future when tens of millions of
religious believers — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim alike — embrace the discoveries of science as public revelation, and in so doing become religious
knowers. I foresee a day when a new understanding of our scientific heritage
prevails. No longer will the scientific picture of the Universe be thought to
imply a cold and mechanistic rendering of cosmic processes, nor a 'nature red
in tooth and claw.' How will this cultural shift come about? In part, because
scientists themselves will applaud those who make the effort to interpret the
discoveries of science in sacred ways. When God-language is used for such
interpretations, that God will be seen as so much more awesome and worthy
of worship than are literalist portrayals of the biblical God. God will be seen
as more powerful, too, and light-years more in line with the moral stance
appropriate for globally interdependent cultures and for the cross-species
interdependent web of life.
Two thousand or more years after the biblical scriptures were written,
humans have substantially expanded our circles of compassion beyond what is
evidenced in the old texts. We see this in the way that genocide not only now
has a name, but that name is invoked for the express purpose of eliciting moral
outrage. Expanded circles of care are also evident in the international sanctions
(global morality) that are regularly applied to motivate transgressor
nations to clean up their act.
When freed from the erroneous belief that ancient holy texts reveal an
accurate picture of God for all time, we can begin to appreciate how they nevertheless
served as indispensable guides for many, many generations. And
then, we need no longer judge unsavory scriptures harshly — even the most violent
passages — or approach them with trepidation. After all, that was then; this
is now.
Over the coming decades I foresee that religious believers of every tradition
will embrace a far larger, more reality-based view of God than was possible
even a century ago. This will be a vision of the Holy One that will draw the vast
majority, regardless of religion or philosophical worldview, into a place of
respect, adoration, love, and care for the larger body of which we all are part.
Scripture will have become more encompassing and universally inspiring
because altogether new writings will qualify as scripture. Our spirituality no
longer restricted to ancient texts, we will come to know and be led by God's
Word in every fact, every detail, every truth of cosmic history and of that undeniable
Wholeness in which we all live and move and have our being." — Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution 2008, p. 324
"Not long after writing emerged, the Bible came to be. For many in the land of
Moses and for centuries thereafter, it would have seemed a miracle to watch
someone coax words from scratches on clay tablets or from strange symbols on
papyrus or animal skins. What words would have been called forth on those
occasions? Such pronouncements would surely have included what we now call
Holy Scripture, or what Jesus' ancestors called the Torah, the first five books of the
Bible. For the Hebrew people, interpretations of the Word, even written interpretations
that would become the Talmud, would be subject to question, debate,
and revision — while the Word itself stood firm. It is thus no wonder that, for
Christians, tradition places great significance on scripture as the written Word.
A much broader understanding of scripture is now emerging, however. It
includes awareness that interpretations of the Holy Word should not be tethered
to the meanings made manifest at any particular time. Rather, interpretations
should grow commensurate with our understanding of the human
condition, the world, and indeed the Cosmos. God's Word has always been evidenced most abundantly and faithfully on
every page of that which is fundamentally Real — the entirety of the natural
world." — Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution 2008, p. 328
"Many among us have yet to cast off the belief that God spoke clearly and was actively involved in human affairs only in the distant past. Thankfully, there is a groundswell movement among Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, Mennonites, Quakers, Pentecostals, New Thought Christians, and others, who find glad tidings in the God-glorifying ways of embracing a multibillion-year story of evolutionary emergence — a story big enough and open enough to uplift the biblical stories within its compass. Thus we arrive, with reluctance or with great expectation, but nevertheless inevitably, at a threshold:
We now know that, as a matter of course, it took many generations for the events described in the Bible to be recorded in written form. Yet today, by continuing to insist that ancient biblical texts are accurate records of the dictated words of an otherworldly, invisible Father, we turn millions away from the real truths available in scripture. Adherence to literalism thus undermines the very gospel it seeks to support. Th ose who think that peoples of the past would not embellish stories to their own ends, and that these departures would not magnify over the decades and in some cases centuries of oral transmittal before they were recorded in writing, do not understand human nature and the biblical portrayal of sin.To hold that a literal interpretation of the Bible is the best or only legitimate interpretation is to foster a schizophrenic break between the religion that still guides our souls and the science that is foundational in so many aspects of our lives — including healing many of us from diseases, injuries, and birth defects that in other times would have been lethal. To continue to insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible in this age of science is to make an idol of human language, while underestimating both the extent of divine revelation and the depth of human fallibility.
Although most Christians still call the collection of letters written two millennia ago The New Testament, the revolutionary idea today is that God has, for centuries, been faithfully and publicly revealing truth via facts uncovered by science. Perhaps we should call sacred interpretations of science The Ever- Renewing Testament.
There is a world of difference between a preevolutionary and an evolutionary understanding of 'biblical inerrancy.' With a God-glorifying understanding of deep time, one need not make an idol of human words as a carrier of God's Word. Rather, from an emergent perspective, we can see that the Bible accurately reveals how the authors and editors of the books of scripture understood themselves, their world, and the nature of Ultimate Reality two or three thousand years ago. Th ose understandings include many powerful insights we can use today, woven in amongst much that is of primarily historical or symbolic value, and even some components that modern sensibilities rightly find morally off ensive. It is up to us to find life-serving meanings in the guidance given us by the Whole over time, no matter what the vehicles of delivery." — Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution 2008, p. 332
"I've never understood the rabid emotions with which people separate evolution from God, God from the body. Why do the devout need suddenness — human life as the brand new product on the shelf produced deus ex machina — as proof of the Divine? Darwin, troubled by dreams of being beheaded or hanged, realized that stating his beliefs in evolutionary process was 'like confessing a murder.' But evolution is godly, its bias toward enhancing collective survival at the price of individual life, the origin of morality. Each body is a storehouse of godly decisions made in the complex biological improvisation of Earth, nature the divine chronographer, genetic chance (the DNA as dice) is God-the-inventor, the intelligence, the luck behind us all." — Alison Hawthorn Deming
"We have Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and God-like technology. That's the source of all our problems." — Edward O. Wilson (2008, Dec 20 issue of Science News, p. 32)
"The universe is a single reality — one long, sweeping spectacular process of interconnected events. The universe is not a place where evolution happens; it is evolution happening. It is not a stage on which dramas unfold; it is the unfolding drama itself. If ever there were a candidate for a universal story,
it must be this story of cosmic evolution....
This story shows us in the deepest possible sense that we are all sisters and brothers. We are 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. And not the least of all, it inspires us to express our gratitude to the past by accepting a solemn and collective responsibility for the future." — Loyal Rue, Everybody's Story, 1999
"When we talk about the Universe Story we are talking about the acquisition of a totally new paradigm, one which overturns many of the patterns that we unconsciously believe to be true. There is not simply the addition of new metaphors and images, but the metaphors and images themselves flow out of a new consciousness inspired by a new awareness of the cosmos." — Judy Cannato
Grand is the seen, the light, to me — grand are the sky and stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary.
— Walt Whitman, "Grand Is the Seen," Leaves of Grass
In every object, mountain, tree, and star — in every birth and life,
As part of each — evolved from each — meaning, behind the ostent,
A mystic cipher waits infolded.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,
Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.
By each successive age insoluble, pass'd on,
To ours to-day — and we pass on the same.
— Walt Whitman, "Life and Death," Leaves of Grass
POEM: "All My Life"
All my life I've wanted to believe in God,
gone to church, followed every spiritual teacher in town,
meditated and prayed, attended 12-step programs,
but still I felt abandoned and alone in the universe.
All my life I've wanted to see the face of God.
Is he really just a mean old man in the sky?
Perhaps God is a chubby Buddha,
or maybe the Dalai Lama, always laughing.
Or is She a woman, the green Tara, weeping pearl tears,
the Virgin of Guadalupe, crowned with roses?
All my life I've tried to solve that old mystery,
Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here?
Then one day I saw the pictures
sent back by the Hubble Telescope:
Hot blue stars born out of the red glow of galaxies,
a pulsating firestorm of fluorescent clouds,
the obsidian sky of deep space.
Spirals of comets, like swirling diamond necklaces.
Black holes, exploding supernovas,
a hundred thousand light-years away,
endless, unimaginable, eternal.
And I knew that finally I had seen the face of God.
— Joyce Keller
POEM: Life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
— Langdon Smith (1858-1908)
POEM: "The Rope" by Loren Eiseley
(click for a PDF version of "The Rope")
This 9 minute YouTube video of Neil deGrasse Tyson is a gem. Click to be inspired by his personal story of how how he became a scientist and his peak spiritual experiences in doing science. (posted June 2008)
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