The biblical origin story gives us divine origin, formed in clay but God-breathed. By the time we get to the New Testament, we have souls whose true life transcends the material and can even progress through heavenly states.
For a very long time it was thought we were made up of the four humours (related to the balance of fire, earth, air and water), and ailments could be linked to an imbalance of the same.
Then came the discovery of cells, atoms, and the periodic table. All of a sudden our makeup was both more complex and more simple.
It turns out that we share our DNA with every living thing on earth, having 90% in common with the lowly mouse. We don’t have the most complex DNA or the simplest DNA on the planet. Both awards go to a plant.
We don’t have the largest brain.
We are not the only creature with the facility for language.
We are not the only creatures capable of empathy.
It turns out we weren’t the only humans walking early earth (Neanderthal, Denisovian). It may be that we dominated these cousins not by superior intellect but by the finest difference in survival strategies.
The location of the heavens have necessarily similarly evolved, no longer associated with the observable sky. Heaven is imagined today is an invisible ethereal state unobservable by any material means.
Keep in mind that the Heaven and the Sheol spoken of in the bible was imagined as the first half of the picture above. Observations that could only have happened in my lifetime put us on the tip of a thread of a universe that is nearly unbelievably massive.
The scale and magnitude is awe inspiring. That life exists at all is incredible.
But as human beings, we are not nearly as special as once supposed. We are made of the same stuff as the universe. This new picture of ourselves does allow for a whole new factor of humility, which may not be a bad thing. Being fragile and not so special may move us to take better care of all life. Especially if it turns out to be a rare thing, finer and more precious than gold.
