Posted on 11/02/2009 8:27:43 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
The Bible tells us that God made mankind—male and female—“in His image” (Genesis 1:26, 27). This gives us humans a special significance in the cosmos. However, modern secular (godless) thinking minimizes this significance.
As Voyager 1 reached the edge of our solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan asked NASA to instruct Voyager to turn around and take a picture looking back towards Earth. The grainy image showed our home as a tiny pale blue dot. In a book written soon after, atheist Sagan wrote,
“our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.”[1]
Having reduced our significance to near nothingness, Sagan then tried to offer something positive:
“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.”
Just how being insignificant suggests that we should be kind to one another and care for planet Earth escapes me. Who cares, if, as Sagan said elsewhere, “The cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be”?...
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Ping!
Read “Privileged Planet” and then tell me how “insignificant” we are to the Creator.
If being an insignificant speck is a rewarding way to go through life, who am I to rain on your parade?
I did :o) How anyone could walk away from that book thinking that we are the product of chance and necessity is beyond me!
Unfortunately, the parade is growing, and it has profound implications for our great country, because our great country inhabits that “insignificant speck.”
Thanks for the ping!
If humans are insignificant flukes, the concept of human rights is arrogant pretense.
'In every leaf that trembles
I can see the Master's hand
Like every sparrow falling
Like every grain of sand.'
(Bob Dylan.)
Blessings,
Beth.
'For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. For those who do *not* believe in God, no explanation is possible.'
People who worry about this are missing the significance of God, not us. If God is infinite, it doesn’t matter if we’re one of a billion or a billion billion planets He created. It isn’t as if He only has so much love or attention to spread around. He cares for each and every soul here and we’re six billion. If he made souls numbering six billion to the six billionth power He’d still love each one as much, would He not?
We are really talking only about our significance in our own finite terms, not His.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is a ‘Ping’?
Worse than arrogant, meaningless.
Yet God gave EACH man a privileged position. You exist. Ever thank Him for giving you a seat at the table? Or is it not significant because the "chances" of you being here were one in a billion billion?
and purpose:
Unfortunately for the Humanist, his theology of atheism often strips him of all sense of purpose. As Ernest Nagel explains, atheism "can offer no hope of personal immortality, no threats of divine chastisement, no promise of eternal recompense for injustices suffered, no blueprints to sure salvation...A tragic view of life is thus an uneliminable ingredient on athiestic thought."
Or atheology for short :o)
Nice find, btw.
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I wonder what Carl Sagan would say today. Probably something similar to the rich man from Luke 16:24.
Why is this in news?
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