Epic of evolution
According to The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, an "epic of evolution" encompasses the 14 billion year narrative of cosmic, planetary, life, and cultural evolution—told in sacred ways.
This epic is not a long narrative poem but a series of events that form the proper subject for a laudable kind of tale.
It is mythic in that it is a story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the worldview of a people and explains a natural phenomenon.
[20] In a similar vein, biologist Ursula Goodenough sees the tale of natural emergence as far more magical than traditional religious miracles.
[26] He preaches that the epic of cosmic, biological, and human evolution, revealed by science, is a basis for an inspiring and meaningful view of our place in the universe.
[27] An entry by Barlow in Bron Taylor's The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature gives four primary categories: cosmic, planetary, life, cultural.
He states that it is a notion that can interpret the enormous expansion and complexification of the physical universe (from the Big Bang outward), as well as the evolution of life here on earth and the gradual emergence of human historical existence.
The whole vast process manifests (in varying degrees) serendipitous creativity, an everflowing coming into being of new modes of reality.
[32] Eric Chaisson orients his view of the epic around an "arrow of time",[33] which he divides into 'Seven Ages of the Cosmos': particulate, galactic, stellar, planetary, chemical, biological, and cultural.
[34][35] However, such a thermodynamic arrow is not intended to be directional, a common misunderstanding; he sees no purpose, plan, or design in evolution, which he regards as unceasing, uncaring, and unpredictable.
As a physicist, he is perhaps best known for attempting to quantify the epic of evolution, using the currently known laws of science and the scientific method (with its insistence on experimental tests of all ideas, principally those of energy rate density) in order to empirically discriminate between objective sense and subjective nonsense.
What emerges is a grand and inspiring scientific narrative of who we are and whence we came—the most recent and up-to-date version of this work having been summarized in a long peer-review article.
However, as the National Academy of Sciences states: Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth's history.
Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution.
He considers evolution to be, at least provisionally, a most appropriate and fruitful scientific framework within which to think about God today and deplores that contemporary theology gets hung up in the creationism controversy.
[44] There are liberal congregations these days that may see the epic of evolution as a history about life and the universe that is both scientific and sacred.
The profoundly sacred elements of the story warm up the cold technical facts with awe and reverence, giving Nature an inspiring beauty.
[46] Although his is a decidedly materialistic view of the evolutionary epic, he recognizes more than most scientists that humanity is part of this grand story and that we have a responsibility to survive as the only sentient, intelligent beings known in the universe.
They see it as a multifaceted concept that has been in Christian theology implicitly for hundreds of years and is congenial to perspectives that include ultimacy, transcendence, purpose and morality.
[52] The course engaged the task of formulating a new epic myth that is based on the physical, natural, social, and cultural sciences for which there are as yet few textbooks.
