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.

Yup, thanks to science we now know that we are insignificant, pointless and irrelevant amongst tens of billions of worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters.

Fortunately, thanks to a whole host of things which scientists have no way to understand or describe and which terrify them to the point of hatred and invective,

... I know that there are people and things in this world which mean infinitely more than all those countless stars and planets put together.

To me, it's not "deep" to dismiss all of human life as trivial and meaningless. It's facile, pointless and as shallow and uninteresting as a muddy puddle.

or not we are insignificant, pointless and irrelevant on that cosmological scale has yet to be determined, and will only be determined in some far-off unimaginable future.

Yup, thanks to science we now know that we are insignificant, pointless and irrelevant amongst tens of billions of worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters.

Fortunately, thanks to a whole host of things which scientists have no way to understand or describe and which terrify them to the point of hatred and invective, I know that there are people and things in this world which mean infinitely more than all those countless stars and planets put together.

To me, it's not "deep" to dismiss all of human life as trivial and meaningless. It's facile, pointless and as shallow and uninteresting as a muddy puddle.

Yup, thanks to science we now know that we are insignificant, pointless and irrelevant amongst tens of billions of worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters.

Fortunately, thanks to a whole host of things which scientists have no way to understand or describe and which terrify them to the point of hatred and invective, I know that there are people and things in this world which mean infinitely more than all those countless stars and planets put together.

To me, it's not "deep" to dismiss all of human life as trivial and meaningless. It's facile, pointless and as shallow and uninteresting as a muddy puddle.

Oh, Carl Sagan decided a long time ago that he knew we were irrelevant and that any sense of importance we have is a delusion, but I agree with you.

Determinism is boring. But the opposite, which you've brought to the thread, is very interesting indeed and well worth discussing.

Butthead.

Yup, thanks to science we now know that we are insignificant, pointless and irrelevant amongst tens of billions of worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters.

Fortunately, thanks to a whole host of things which scientists have no way to understand or describe and which terrify them to the point of hatred and invective, I know that there are people and things in this world which mean infinitely more than all those countless stars and planets put together.

To me, it's not "deep" to dismiss all of human life as trivial and meaningless. It's facile, pointless and as shallow and uninteresting as a muddy puddle.

Yup, thanks to science we now know that we are insignificant, pointless and irrelevant amongst tens of billions of worlds, stars, galaxies and clusters.

To me, it's not "deep" to dismiss all of human life as trivial and meaningless. It's facile, pointless and as shallow and uninteresting as a muddy puddle.

Just coming back to this:


Yup, that pretty much sums up the grand scale of things (that is, if you take the term "tens" to encompass a few extra orders of magnitude). This concept obviously disturbs and frightens you. Why?

Yes, the cosmos doesn't care if I exist. But I do. I care about myself, I care about other people, and I have people around me who care about me. Professionally, I care about my work, and do my best in the hope that it will make a difference in the lives of others. Intellectually, I am constantly awed, amazed, fascinated and humbled at the new things I learn about the world every day.

So what if the universe doesn't care about me? I care about me - and I find that's more than enough.


See, this statement says very little about Carl Sagan but speaks volumes about you. Nobody claimed that "all of human life is trivial and meaningless". It's quite telling that you should see it that way.

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.

Just coming back to this:


Yup, that pretty much sums up the grand scale of things (that is, if you take the term "tens" to encompass a few extra orders of magnitude). This concept obviously disturbs and frightens you. Why?

Yes, the cosmos doesn't care if I exist. But I do. I care about myself, I care about other people, and I have people around me who care about me. Professionally, I care about my work, and do my best in the hope that it will make a difference in the lives of others. Intellectually, I am constantly awed, amazed, fascinated and humbled at the new things I learn about the world every day.

So what if the universe doesn't care about me? I care about me - and I find that's more than enough.


See, this statement says very little about Carl Sagan but speaks volumes about you. Nobody claimed that "all of human life is trivial and meaningless". It's quite telling that you should see it that way.

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.

It surprises you that tradman would completely misinterpret something?

I couldn't help but read this quote:

The entire thrust of my position is that Christian theology is a non-subject. It is empty. Vacuous. Devoid of coherence or content.

----- Richard Dawkins

It's a sad thing that someone of intelligence would not see the "content" and truth in a phrase like, "You can have all the knowledge, and all the wealth in the world, but if you have not love, you have nothing."

That's a beautiful sentiment... but are you seriously going to claim that this idea is the product of Christianity?

Jesus covered this topic over and over, warning that focussing on the things this world holds valuable - money, knowledge, power and the rest - gets in the way of caring for our fellow human beings. In fact, he spoke more about this than almost any other subject.

I find it interesting that other posters have inserted religion into this debate. I didn't even mention it, and wasn't referring to it ...