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Author Arthur C Clarke said "Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not.
Both are equally terrifying."
Seen from 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) by the space probe Voyager 1, Earth appears as a
pale blue dot (approximately halfway along the brown band of sunlight at the top, highlighted by a blue
ring) within the darkness of deep space.
Carl Sagan, author of the book "The Pale Blue Dot" said,
"From this distant vantage point, the Earth
might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here,
that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every
human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands
of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and
coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in
love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every
corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of
our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all
those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary
masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner
of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in
the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great
enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come
from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps
no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To
me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and
cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
The Universe is far too big to just be a home for us, so some believe that there must be other life out
there. But what if the purpose of the Universe is not just to be a home? The Universe is not too big if
it's purpose is to declare the glory of God.
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