I cant post photos or links yet so please take the time to look at these photos, they had a profound affect on me. I realise they are famous and many of you will have seen them already, but for those who havnt.....
' Pale blue dot voyager 1' photo google image it it
This photo was taken by Voyager 1, as it left our solar system.
Look again at 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.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
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.
-Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan was not a Christian. However there are so many aspects of this speech that indicate he had so much more of an idea of what it is to be Christian than many....Christians. A far more solid grasp than I have on how small we are, how humble we should be. How the worlds violence and oppression is so insignificant compared to the universe that god created.
How often do we find ourselves looking at people of no faith or different faith and think wow, s/he is a better christian than me?
How often do we find ourselves looking at photos like this:
'Earth rise apollo 8' photo....google image it.
And thinking how little we appreciate the gift we have been given.
No matter who or what we worship, whether or not we are given dominion over earth to take care of it, or see ourselves as one with earth. We all have something in common, we of all faiths.
Yet we have a tendency to so easily forget what we have in common, and ironically, that is the same tendency which will destroy that which we do have in common.
' Pale blue dot voyager 1' photo google image it it
This photo was taken by Voyager 1, as it left our solar system.
Look again at 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.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
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.
-Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan was not a Christian. However there are so many aspects of this speech that indicate he had so much more of an idea of what it is to be Christian than many....Christians. A far more solid grasp than I have on how small we are, how humble we should be. How the worlds violence and oppression is so insignificant compared to the universe that god created.
How often do we find ourselves looking at people of no faith or different faith and think wow, s/he is a better christian than me?
How often do we find ourselves looking at photos like this:
'Earth rise apollo 8' photo....google image it.
And thinking how little we appreciate the gift we have been given.
No matter who or what we worship, whether or not we are given dominion over earth to take care of it, or see ourselves as one with earth. We all have something in common, we of all faiths.
Yet we have a tendency to so easily forget what we have in common, and ironically, that is the same tendency which will destroy that which we do have in common.
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