Carl Sagan is not one of my go-to theologians, but he is a fascinating and thought-provoking astrophysicist. As you might guess, the two of us are amazed at the same complexity of our physical reality of the Cosmos of which we are a part. However, we come to opposing conclusions about its meaning and purpose.
Sagan finds no purpose in the physical world. It is because it became. It won’t be when it ceases to be. As for humans, they are born, they live, and they die. In all the collective discoveries of the cosmos, he finds no evidence of a Devine Being who created, sustains, and is interested in the physical creation.
This is where a NASA photograph of our planet named, “The Pale Blue Dot” captured my attention.
Launched from Earth in 1977, Voyager 1, the only human-created object to leave our solar system, turned around and took a picture of its origin, Earth. You will need to examine the photo posted on this blog. You may have to zoom in to find it. The dot will be in the orange streak toward the right.
The original picture is composed of 640,000 pixels. Of those, the blue dot is just 0.12 of a shingle pixel. Voyager 1 was traveling at 40,000 miles an hour on February 14, 1990.
(If you like this sort of stuff, check it out on Wikipedia.)
The idea for taking the picture came from Carl Sagan. After seeing the picture, he authored a book titled, “The Pale Blue Dot.” Here is a summation of his thoughts spanned by seeing the photo.
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. …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. … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world”
Finding “no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves” is a long way to say, “There is no being some might call God.” For me, that conclusion falls under the heading of “the folly of human conceits”.
The right side of my brain agrees with Sagan, it is the only logical conclusion of the data. It causes me to wonder if my beliefs are mere superstitions contrived by my ancestors and adapted by me to fill in the vast emptiness of why I exist. To shape my life around the teachings of a Being my five senses cannot identify is difficult. Whenever I am pondering the vastness of creation my mind just finds its limits of “knowing.” And I feel venerable and bewildered.
Some might say that my faith is weak. Perhaps. But for me, faith is not something that is fixed and static. My faith is challenged all the time. Well, at least regularly. It is dynamic. So, I ask God, “If you are there, I want to find you. I need you.” When I am honest with my wonderings God has always been responsive. This time He brought this picture to my mind.
From my reading and searching, I have concluded that Sagan’s thinking is flawed. He is looking for the Creator among the created. For me, Creation is not outside of the person of God but whole within God’s being. And that is where the “pin prick” came to mind.
From what I have found, a typical ten-year-old body is composed of seventeen trillion cells. That is a one followed by a seven followed by twelve zeros. Take that average pre-teen to the doctor for a shot of medication and he or she can put his or her finger on the exact spot where the tiny needle poked through a couple of those cells.
When I experience joy, sorrow, pain, or gain, God feels it and can put a “finger” on it.
Psalm 139:7-12 New International Version7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
Photo: NASA’s “Pale Blue Dot”
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