The Great Story

The Great Story, "The Epic of Evolution", and "Evolution Theology" refer to mythopoetic language used by a social movement (or meta-religious movement) that tells the history of the Universe in ways that are simultaneously scientific and sacred. It is an articulation of the understandings of modern science – especially the evolutionary sciences ranging from stellar evolution to biological evolution and cultural evolution – as a sacred creation story, much like the traditional creation myths passed down through oral cultures and sacred texts. The most visible contemporary popularizers of the Great Story are Michael Dowd, a former pastor, and , a science author.

Teachings
Advocates of the Great Story see science not only as a source of physical truths that empower technology and the material affluence and complexity of modern life. They see its 14 billion year epic of evolution – with its eons of increasing complexity, aliveness, consciousness and intelligence – as a story filled with meaning and moral texture.

A foundational book in the Great Story/Evolution Theology movement is The Universe Story (1992) by Brian Swimme, a mathematical cosmologist, and Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest of the Passionist order and a cultural historian. But the movement sees itself as having roots in the work of anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley, biologist Edward O. Wilson, early conservation movement leader Aldo Leopold, evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley and the French Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (himself inspired by Henri Bergson). Recent contributions to an understanding of the Epic of Evolution include the writings of Robert Wright, John Stewart, Joel Primack and , John Haught, Eric Chaisson, David Sloan Wilson, Jonathan Haidt, Ursula Goodenough, and Russ Genet.

The Great Story Timeline
# 13,700 mya: Great Radiance - beginning of the universe (13.7 billion years ago)
# 12,000 mya: Galactic Phase - formation of stars
# 4,600 mya: Hadean - formation of Earth, pre-life
# 3,800 mya: Archaean - first life: bacteria
# 2,000 mya: Proterozoic - amoebas
# 540 mya: Paleozoic - complex life
#* 540-500 mya: Cambrian
#* 500-440 mya: Ordovician
#* 440-410 mya: Silurian
#* 410-360 mya: Devonian
#* 360-290 mya: Carboniferous
#* 290-245 mya: Permian
# 245 mya: Mesozoic - dinosaurs
#* 245-210 mya: Triassic
#* 210-45 mya: Jurassic - flowering plants
#* 145-65 mya: Cretaceous
# 65 mya: Cenozoic - mammals & birds
# 0.013 mya: Holocene - human-caused extinctions (13,000 years ago)
# Today: Ecozoic - Vision for the future

Ecozoic Era
The Ecozoic Era refers to the promise of a coming era when humans live in a mutually enhancing relationship with the larger community of life systems. The Ecozoic Era could also be called the “ecological age.”

There are generally five principles set forth for the Ecozoic:

# Recognizing that the Universe is primarily a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
# Beyond suicide, homicide, and genocide, there are even more violent crimes -- biocide and geocide: biocide, the wanton killing of the life systems of the planet; geocide, the killing of the planet itself in its major forms of expression.
# The human is derivative, the Earth is primary. The primary concern of every profession, institute, and activity of the human betrays itself unless it makes this larger earth community its primary referent.
# Humans will recognize the rights of other members of the Earth Community to habitat and their share of the Earth's benefits.
# Celebration of the grandeur and loveliness and joy of existence on the planet Earth will be essential to human society.

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