ABSTRACT
Big history is one of the terms for telling the whole story from the Big Bang to the present. On this scale, many aspects highly significant to human lives tend to disappear from view—for instance, art, music, literature, dance, and sports. On this largest scale the lens of big historians usually focuses on energy flows, political/social organization, trade, environment, and resources. Since the beginning of civilizations, morality and religion have been so closely intertwined that we have difficulty thinking of them as separate phenomena. Studies from ethnology have shown that other animals, at the very least mammals, display behavior that can be called moral, or at least proto-moral, while not displaying behavior that can be called religious. Most definitions of religion, including the one we are using, suggest that religion and morality are intertwined, that religious belief suggests, promotes, and supports moral behavior.
