  Religion gives meaning to human lives by assigning them a certain definite place within a grander scheme or narrative. It gives its adherents a sense of their part in a coherent universe. It tells us that the universe is not a random conjunction of brute facts, but a whole in which we have our proper location. The pantheist may regard the cosmos as divine for very similar reasons. To think of oneself as part of a vast interconnected scheme may give one a sense of being ‘at home in the universe.’ Here ecological thinking may come to the fore; like the individual creatures in a complex ecosystem, small but vital contributors to a larger whole, we too may be thought to have our place in the connected whole that is Nature.