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"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, the Universe, nay whole systems of Universes to be governed by laws; but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act."
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CosmosThis mysterious something has been called God, the Absolute, Nature, S — Cosmos
"This mysterious something has been called God, the Absolute, Nature, Substance, Energy, Space, Ether, Mind, Being, the Void, the Infinite — names and ideas which shift in popularity and respectability with the winds of intellectual fashion, of considering the universe intelligent or stupid, superhuman or subhuman, specific or vague. All of them might be dismissed as nonsense-noises if the notion of an underlying Ground of Being were no more than a product of intellectual speculation. But these names are often used to designate the content of a vivid and almost sensorily concrete experience — the "unitive" experience of the mystic, which, with secondary variations, is found in almost all cultures at all times. This experience is the transformed sense of self which I was discussing in the previous chapter, though in "naturalistic" terms, purified of all hocus-pocus about mind, soul, spirit, and other intellectually gaseous words."
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Cosmos
Cosmos
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The cosmos is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
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"There is no God-Creator, but there is the Cosmos, which creates suns, planets and living beings. There is no omnipotent God, but there is the Universe, which governs the fates of all celestial bodies and their inhabitants. There are no sons of God, but there are mature and thus rational and perfect sons of the Cosmos. There are no personal gods, but there are elected leaders of planets, solar systems, stellar groups, milky ways, islands of ether and the whole Cosmos. There is no Christ, but there is a brilliant man and a greater teacher of mankind."
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CosmosQuote
"Whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be."
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CosmosQuote
"Mans relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is mans relation to the cosmos — to the unknown — which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination. The humanocentric pose is impossible to me, for I cannot acquire the primitive myopia which magnifies the earth and ignores the background."
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CosmosQuote
"This is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning."
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Cosmos