The View from Now Here
Just as the ancients had a geocentric view of earth’s place in the cosmos, we naturally tend to have an egocentric view of our place in the world.
Two views:
What we can see is all there is.
There is more to it than what we can see.
The astrophysicists tell us that what we can see is barely 5% of what is “out there” (the rest they call Dark Matter and Dark Energy – invisible but very much there and measurable).
The Quantum-physicists tell us that the basis of matter is made up of teeny tiny strings of “stuff” separated by relatively vast distances of apparently empty space (actually, it’s much like the universe except we can see stars and galaxies).
Yet we must be very careful when attributing motives and personality onto “what-is”. It’s called “anthropomorphism” – the tendency to attribute human characteristics onto animals, plants, stones, rivers, mountains, natural phenomena and forces like lightning, earthquakes, etc. etc. This is all projection.
Religion/theology is the projection of human characteristics upon “what-is” and then to call it “God”.
