The Story of Cosmic Evolution

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"There's a huge story there much richer to my mind than in the bible of the crun um that is there," he says. "A lot of my moral understandings come from my understanding that I'm a primate and there are all sorts of social emotions if you will that I inherit at birth that have to do with nurture and bonding and so there's all sorts of stuff that can be informative in uh foraging one's religious orientation right?" He also talks about his fascination with clothing optional hot tubs on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean as well as Europe's great cathedrals. 'I get the same kind of feeling like my wife from Cologne Germany,' writes

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope.

Shermer and Goodenough discuss: origins of her personal beliefs • origins life, RNA, DNA, consciousness, language, morality • myths and religions • what it means to be “religious” • religious naturalism • where the laws of physics came from • why the universe seems so strange • chance and evolution • fine tuning of the cosmos • autocatalysis and emergence • purpose of religion • ethics and morality without religion.

Ursula Goodenough is Professor Emerita of Biology at Washington University. One of America's leading cell biologists, she is the author of a bestselling textbook on genetics, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard. Her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, is now in a second edition. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association.