What Comes Next?

Abstract

Rapid cultural change, exacerbated by economic distress, has triggered a powerful authoritarian reflex. Whether this is the wave of the future depends on how we learn to cope with the winner-takes-all economies of advanced knowledge societies. Traditional religions present each culture’s norms as universal values, which can be dangerously divisive. To function positively in a globalizing world, religion needs a universal perspective. The cosmology of the Big Bang is at least as impressive as the account in Genesis. That universe had the potential to develop good and evil, benevolence and meaning—but none of these existed before intelligent life emerged. The account of creation in the book of Genesis can be seen as a first approximation of the more recent account provided by the Big Bang theory—which is only a first approximation of the ultimate account. Both traditional religion and modern science provide successive approximations of a truth that is still being fathomed.