Before humans had any understanding of the world or the sky, our view of them was necessarily extremely provincial. With the arrival of science, our consciousness has been expanding steadily without apparent limit, and each step has increased our perspective. The new world views have progressively reduced the self- importance of humans relative to all we understand. In the beginning our view was like that of an infant who is conscious only of himself, knowing nothing of the larger world.

The traditional attempt to understand the objective world was religion, with its anthropomorphic notion of causes; thinking that people-like creatures are responsible for events is much easier to grasp than general scientific principles. Science tends to be abstract, difficult, remote, and cold; that makes its explanations unappealing to many. But as criteria for more complete understanding developed, primitive theism has steadily given way to the new method of discovering objective truth. Part of this process is removing the infantile view of humanity as central to the universe; indications are that we are a microscopic irrelevancy in the large view. Humanity has steadily been demoted from that central view to the latter view of our unimportance (except to ourselves). Some of the many steps in this great, gradual diminution of our position are the following.

a.      Initial Provincialism.

When the Old Testament was written, roughly from 1500 BCE to 300 BCE, most of the world was unknown. Among many other errors, this naiveté allowed the writer of Exodus, who had no knowledge of great heights such as 8000-meter mountains, to assert that a flood covered the entire world.

 Fifteen cubits is only about 22 feet! The Israelites’ narrow view of the world influenced later Bible authors, who ignored the fact that most societies had never heard of Jesus because they already had entrenched religions of their own. The Old Testament reflects deep provincialism, much of which carried over to the time of Jesus.

b.      The Earth Rotates

 Part of the self-centered worldview was thinking that the apparent stillness of the Earth was objectively real. The Israelites and most other ancient peoples thought the Earth was motionless. Among other verses stating this are these.

 The Earth, humanity‘s abode, was naturally thought to be the static center of the Universe. The celestial sphere and the bodies embedded in it were observed to revolve around the world once per day. The new idea that the Earth was not stationary but rotated on its axis, while everything else was fixed, was a major step in reducing mankind to a more modest position. One cannot blame the Israelites for this self-centered view any more than one can blame a child for the same thing, but God should have known better than to commit major errors in astronomy when inspiring the Bible.

c.       The Earth is Not the Center

An even bigger step came next. Copernicus (1473-1543) suggested that the center of the universe was the Sun, not the Earth; this started the modern science of astronomy. Tycho observed other planets’ orbits and Kepler developed mathematical laws governing them. Galileo observed phases of Venus, proving heliocentrism beyond any doubt. He watched Jupiter’s major moons in their orbits around that planet, providing more evidence that there are other centers of revolution besides the Earth.

The old view was that humans inhabit one of three layers in the universe, with heaven above and hell below, both existing in relation to us. This view is of course utterly obsolete. The ordinariness of Earth’s position in the universe is called the Copernican Principle or the Principle of Mediocrity (not a value judgment!) which has been precisely confirmed. ¹ So far we have a rotating, revolving body as our abode, but the solar system could still be central in the universe.

d.      The Sun and Other Stars

 The Sun was found to be vastly larger than the Earth, and much farther away than previously suspected. Copernicus, Kepler (1571-1630), and Galileo (1564-1642) found that the Sun, the ultimate source of all earthly energy and life, is a star, and is therefore much like the thousands of other stars visible with the naked eye. The Church took violent exception to these ideas because they moved humanity from center stage and diminished the importance of God and Jesus. They had no idea that this dethroning would continue so far as it has gone.

e.       Stellar Distances

When it became possible to measure distances to nearby stars, the closest one was found to be 25 trillion miles away, a distance enormously greater than anything previously imagined. Most stars are much farther still, with some billions of times more distant. These vast distances established that the scale of humanity and its religions is trivial compared to the known universe. It was starting to look like humans don’t matter much, an idea still fiercely resisted.

f.        Our Position in the Galaxy

Around 1920 it was found that the Sun is not near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which at that time was thought to be the entire universe. A new unit of distance was introduced to measure vast astronomical scales, namely the light-year, about 5.87 trillion miles or 9.46 million million kilometers. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, with our solar system about midway from the center to the edge. We orbit the galaxy’s center in about 225 million years. The galaxy contains approximately 400 billion stars, of which the Sun, over one million times the volume of the earth, is just one! The true scale of the Earth in the cosmos was becoming apparent.

g.      Innumerable Galaxies

Later, in the 1920’s, Edwin Hubble found that there are many other galaxies, and they are receding from us. ² These findings made it clear that we inhabit one small planet around one unexceptional star in one typical galaxy out of many billions. The part of the universe we can potentially see is 42 billion light-years in radius (assuming it has a flat geometry). By one definition, the radius of the observable universe is 78 billion light-years. ³ It follows that we are too insignificant to matter to the universe as a whole, and nothing we do could have the slightest effect on it. Even if we blew up the whole planet with hydrogen bombs, the explosion would be microscopically trivial compared to a nova or supernova; they involve the destruction of an entire star. Not only that, but anything done on earth would take up to 100,000 years to be noticed even in our own galaxy. Our neighbor, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, is similar to our own Milky Way; when it is viewed in ordinary telescopes it looks fuzzy, but the fuzz is unresolved billions of stars.

h.      Expansion of the Universe

All galaxies beyond the mutual gravitational influence are rushing away from us and from each other. Eventually the universe will be so dilute and so large that we will be utterly isolated, even more than we are now. Even if in the distant future a very advanced race were able to influence the entire galaxy, it would have no effect on anything else because there would be no neighbors close enough to be influenced. It takes more than imagination to think that Jesus  matters in this situation.

i.        The Total Number of Stars

The number of stars in the observable universe in all of the billions of galaxies defies ordinary imagining. This number can be made vivid as follows: suppose that every one of the six billion people on Earth each counted one star per second, 24/7, without stopping, and with no duplication of counts. Each person would count 86,400 stars per day, not a practical task! Even so, the count would not be complete for over 300,000 years! ⁴ Further, cosmologists are speculating that our entire observable universe may be only an insignificant fraction of the whole cosmos, that is, everything that exists in nature.

j.        Galactic Geometry

Recently it was found that the center of our galaxy contains a black hole, a region so dense that not even light can escape. This black hole has the mass of four million suns, and the sun is 300,000 times as heavy as the entire earth!

Like an individual star, each galaxy has a habitable zone; stars and planets too close or too far from the center cannot support life for various reasons. There are also many other known restrictions that limit life to extremely special conditions and locations. This shows that the universe is “fine tuned,” or life-friendly, in only a limited sense. Virtually all of it is inhospitable to life.

k.      Violent Phenomena

Such events as novae, supernovae, gamma ray bursts, black hole collisions, quasars, and other explosive events are so far out of the human scale that our puny lives could be snuffed out at any time. There is no proof that this will or won’t happen. That possibility further reduces our significance, and indicates that God may not care enough about us.

l.        Conditions for Life

A theist could say that the universe has to be at least its present age so that enough heavy elements, which accumulate as stars explode, exist to allow life. That is probably correct, but the 100 billion or so other galaxies are not necessary for our existence. The theist might also argue that God made the universe this big so we would understand his full magnificence. Is God such that he needs to make us feel puny? The God-believer has a serious problem here concerning the unreasonable, unnecessary scale. The usual answer that God works in mysterious ways explains exactly nothing and leads to no answers If God wanted some live beings around to interact with, surely he could have found a more straightforward way to create them.

m.    Scale in time and Space

The big bang is now a solid, undisputed fact, in spite of efforts by some theists to cast doubt on it. Its discovery further dethroned humanity because the universe was found to be extremely old, and because the galaxy we inhabit is only an unexceptional one out of billions. We are a mere dust mote on the large scale, hardly worthy of notice in the greater creation, let alone the sacrifice of the “only begotten son” of the creator of the universe.

n.      Age of the Earth

Some Christians have used genealogies in the Old Testament to derive a young age of the Earth. There is no evidence backing their guess of only 6000-10000 years. It disagrees profoundly with ages found from geology, physics, and astronomy. The actual ages, now known accurately, are 13.7 billion years for the universe and about 1/3 of that for the Earth. Recorded history is about 5000 years long, about one millionth the age of the Earth. The span of human existence is negligible compared to astronomical ages.

o.      Size of the Universe

The potentially visible universe extends in all directions from Earth by 46.5 billion light-years. We are in a perfectly ordinary position in the universe, which has no center. The entire universe may be infinite. ⁵  If God fine-tuned everything to make human life possible, he was quite extravagant and gave us every sign that we don’t matter at the cosmic scale. He created parts we will never be able to observe, let alone communicate with or visit. The known size demotes the human race to the point where it is essentially invisible.

p.      There Are Many Other Planets

Astronomers have found more than 350 planets in other solar systems, with more discovered every month. The search for life elsewhere, primitive or intelligent, continues. All indications are that there are billions of planets in this galaxy alone, some undoubtedly hospitable for life. Although no communicating civilizations have been found yet, if we were to discover one, the effect on Bible belief will be interesting. Would extraterrestrials have heard of God’s only begotten son? If they have, they may wonder why Jesus worked only in Israel and ignored all other countries and continents, spending his life in about 1/10000 of the inhabitable part of the Earth’s surface. For that matter, why did God affect only this planet? If he cared about any other civilizations, did he have other offspring to sacrifice?

q.      Our Arbitrary Frame of Reference

 Einstein found that we have no special position or velocity in space. The laws of physics are the same for any observer, human or otherwise. With spectroscopy we see that the laws of physics and chemistry are the same throughout the universe and throughout observable time. There is also a personal frame of reference, in which our intuition, supposedly given to us by God, is completely wrong in the many situations which humans have not experienced previously. Another fundamental question is why the universe is neither impossible nor easy to understand. God seems to have chosen a middle way which reveals some secrets but keeps many others (including himself) inaccessible. Why is that?

r.       Fate of the Universe

The universe will long outlast the human race but will not go on forever, contradicting the many statements about eternity in the Bible. Jesus promises eternal life to those who follow certain ambiguous and contradictory rules. See Matthew 19:16-21. If God is eternal, the end of the universe will leave him with nothing to do. Scientifically, it is presently thought that the existence of dark energy forecloses the possibility that the universe will stop expanding. How does that comprise fine tuning or allow for eternity?

s.       Dark Matter and Energy

The existence of dark matter shows that we are composed of a material that isn’t what the majority of the universe is made of. ⁶ the discovery of dark energy shows that we do not understand some of the most important forces in the universe. We may find that they don’t affect our lives and have had no effect on our history, putting us in an even more irrelevant position. Dark energy has recently been confirmed independently of the original method. ^{1, 7} Whatever scientists find about these phenomena, it is extremely unlikely that the idea of God will be supported.

t.        Parallel Universes

Cosmologists are actively speculating about the possibility of other universes. If they exist, we may have even less importance in the largest picture than suggested above. Scientists are seriously exploring the idea that there was no first instant, allowing the possibility of time before the Big Bang. ^{8, 9} That would eliminate the idea that God was necessary for the universe to begin. If God can be without a beginning, the physical universe can as well; the latter is a simpler idea. The universe’s “prehistory” is speculative at present.

u.      Extra Dimensions

Cosmologists and physicists also speculate about the existence of more dimensions than the familiar three plus time. The active field of string theory, an attempt to combine general relativity and quantum mechanics, requires ten or eleven dimensions. If this is true, we humans are confined to only a fraction of existing dimensions, placing us on the periphery of the conceptual universe.

v.      Humans Evolved

Darwin (1809-1882) and Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) discovered evolution by natural selection, and that all life on Earth has a common origin. As a result, we have a reduced status, having gone from being God’s unique creation to just an unusual animal. Our intelligence is obviously unique on Earth, but we belong to the animal kingdom in every measureable way. Believers realize that evolution would reduce our specialness, so they fight it. If evolution is the correct story of life and humankind, then there was no Adam or Eve, no original sin, and no need for Jesus.

Rather than viewing humankind as a unique, wonderful, natural creation, apologists would rather see us as degraded in the depths of sin and doomed to hell unless favored by an invisible, capricious savior.

w.     No Vital Force

Biologists have found nothing in the human body or brain that can’t be explained at the molecular level by chemistry. At the lowest level of explanation, we are just complex biochemical processes with no supernatural essence. At higher levels other explanations are needed, but scientists expect that natural ones will allow full understanding. We are entirely natural rather than Godlike or special. The discovery of DNA has confirmed our full membership in the natural world beyond reasonable doubt.

x.      No Supernatural Phenomena

Brain researchers have found no evidence of a soul or other supernatural phenomena. We are smarter than other animals but have no magical spiritual essence. It is known that specific brain areas accomplish specific types of mental processes such as recognizing faces, indicating that the mind and brain are intimately related. The mind is completely dependent on the brain, so when the brain dies, the mind dies too. There is no possibility of an afterlife. The body is completely degraded soon after death, so physical resurrection is impossible. There is no evidence that anyone has ever come back after death.

y.      Science is Impersonal

As science took over from superstition, humans lost hope that they could control things by pleading with the gods. Weather, disease, and natural disasters have purely  natural causes, fundamentalists of various sorts notwithstanding. Praying to rain gods or to the Christian God does no good if they don’t exist. Science is purely impersonal and is viewed by some less rational people as very threatening. The replacement of superstitious beliefs by science may be the final step in removing humans from a central, important place where we have an illusion of control. That and the fear of death may be among the most powerful motivators for religious belief, but that has nothing to do with the truth of theism, if any.

z.       Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

If other civilizations exist, presumably we are not that special to God - or maybe all civilizations are equally so. That would dethrone humanity with finality and beyond all argument. The ETI search has produced nothing so far, except we have found that there is not a communicating society behind every tree. The search is still at a very early stage.

 

These 24 separate scientific findings, plus possibly item y, have removed the human race further and further from a special position. We know that we are not central in time, place, or composition, or qualitatively different among species. Our bodily scale places us midway between the subatomic and galactic scales, but rather than giving us some kind of comfort, it makes both size extremes almost impossible to understand.

If we discover either other universes or time before the Big Bang, religious ideas will become even more irrelevant to understanding ourselves and our status. That status is now fairly well understood from a naturalistic point of view, and we appear to be no more than a trivial, microscopic accident in the big picture.

It is important to realize that no invoking of the supernatural has ever increased real knowledge of the natural world. Progress in knowledge has always been in one direction: religion becomes less relevant as science becomes more so. Science can’t explain everything in the natural world but religion can’t explain anything.

Our only real importance is to the Earth, to humanity as a whole, to our country, to family and friends, and to ourselves. Because it’s hard to care about something completely unknown, that loyalty is quite sufficient! We need nothing supernatural to give meaning to our lives. It is unrealistic and amusingly provincial to think we have a special role in God’s universe; it appears exactly as we would expect if there is no God.

Religion has several principal psychological functions: to instill a false sense of importance, to maintain the illusion of some control over the world and one’s life, and to prescribe morality (albeit with severe contradictions). Most important, it gives the illusion of avoiding death’s finality; no one can visualize his or her nonexistence with tranquility. These beliefs offer some temporary comfort but that comfort has the price of fleeing reality. We must look at religion for its psychological usefulness, not for its prescientific explanations of the world.

References

1. Zibin, James; Moss, Adam; Scott, Douglas. Can We Avoid Dark Energy? Phys. Rev. Lett, 101, 251303 (2008)

2. Hoskin, Michael (ed.) The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy, 1999, p. 288 ff

3. Britt, Robert R. (for Space.com), Universe Measured: We’re 156 Billion Light-years Wide, 2004. www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html

4. ________, Imperfect Estimate Claims Universe Has 70 Sextillion Stars, www.space.com/scienceastronomy/star_count_030722.html (2003)

5. NASA. Universe 101: Is the Universe Infinite?, http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html

6. Science Daily. Astronomers Discover Largest-ever Dark Matter Structures Spanning 270M Light-years, Feb. 22, 2008. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080221121109.htm

7. Matson, John. Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt? Dark Energy Independently Confirmed, 12/19/2008, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-energy-confirmed&sc=WR_20081223

8. Bojowald, Martin. Big Bang or Big Bounce? New Theory on the Universe’s Birth, www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=big-bang-or-big-bounce October 2008 and http://live.psu.edu/story/24915 , 2009.

9. Tegmark, Max. Parallel Universes, Scientific American special, 2004.