Spiritual Atheist – Awe and Respect

One dimension of my spirituality is an appreciation of the universe revealed to man by science. A world in which a modicum of curiosity is rewarded by an awe inspiring message. Respect and awe are two values that I make a conscious effort to embrace.

Evolutionary theory states that life took a billion years to evolve. The thing about a billion years is that it is not just difficult to comprehend, but impossible. If you lived to be a hundred years old, then a billion years is ten million life times – or 10,000,000. Or fifty million generations.  Compared to the 4000 years that have transpired since the building of the pyramids in Egypt that’s 250,000 times as long. Or as a fraction, .000004.

It’s just awesome amount of time. It deserves our respect and awe.

Astronomy presents us with equally mind boggling distances and quantities that defy understanding.  In our galaxy, a midsize galaxy by universal standards, there are 100 billions stars (100,000,000,000). And there are maybe 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. I won’t try multiplying the two together because the result would be as meaningless as either number alone. But just look some night and try to imagine. It’s an awesome thought.

Or zoom in from the very large to the very small. A conservative estimate puts the number of cells in the human body at ten trillion (10,000,000,000,000). In dollars you could just about pay for the recent government bailout. And once you zoom into the inside of a single cell you will find a place of miraculous complexity. It is an intricate dance of molecules, the full beauty of is only barely understood.

As I step down from my soap box, it occurs to me that the awe and respect I feel is similar to the awe and respect embraced by many of the religious (you say God I say universe). Maybe there is common ground to be had (I am just not into sin and people getting nailed to anything).