Imagine a new cosmos starting, aware only of itself. Time and space have not yet formed, but soon are created: time, which allows iterations of situation to occur sequentially, is followed by space, a similar concept, in which more than one situation can exist, and they can interact. This process continues until there is also matter, then planets, and finally, life. The new cosmos is no longer such a lonely place.

At some point after this, some of the life forms on this planet develop consciousness. As one can imagine, their imediate task would be to balance their own ability for independent action with their origins and dependence on the whole of nature, including the cosmos that formed them; from this seed all spiritual and philosophical thought arises. For most species, all things in the cosmos are associated with a single basic syllable meaning "to give," such as "God," and thus are conveniently expressed in discourse.

Over time, this god-concept breaks down from an explanation of existence to a prescription for existence, because the original consensus that life is excellent has been lost through the onset of civilization and, several generations after it, the emergence of people for whom a time without civilization is inconceivable. To them, success in life is achieved by manipulating other people to do things in a specific way, and thus it helps to have an Absolute law to which to refer, in the form "God wants you to." Because both before and after death there is only the will of the cosmos, God is soon elected to be a force that mediates death, and if one does the will of God, one becomes eternal.

This is no longer God as nature, but God as social force, and brings all corruption of spirituality, which can no longer be something that connects the species in question to their world, but something that divides them from it, and an order they impose upon it. God is now the arbitrator of reality, and from it requests are made; this replaces the heroic spirit of the civilization builders, who saw God as an order within which they created, and would not have supposed to ask from God what God freely gives.

Acknowledging existence as a gift, in that it did not need to occur, nor asks from us any inherent allegiance except to survival, it makes little sense to expect God to rule over existence and to separate it into divisions such that we can ask for good, and request to avoid the bad. Existence is a whole, and when we view God as the foundation of this existence and not something contrary to it, we are able to see the incomparable genius of this cosmos and appreciate the benevolence of the existence of life itself. When this is forgotten, we look for a God to protect us who is in a form like ours, presupposing we need a protector against the world, and thus in our new enmity toward the cosmos we lose a sense of wonder and reverence for it.

Individuals and civilizations alike go through this beginning, which like all childhoods culminates in facing adult life and the full weight of truth; if we turn our backs from truth, and appeal to a God separate from existence itself, it may be seen as an error that can be corrected through time, experience, and a gentleness toward ourselves through which we achieve a forgiving and loving nature toward the world as whole. Until we undertake this experience, however, we have not accepted reality as a whole, and will some degree be alienated from it, looking for God in the wrong form to save us - from ourselves.