A Pale Blue Dot–Is That All We Are?

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  In the verses that follow it tells of how God did this creation in stages, over six days. 

The earth gets all the attention.  The sun and moon are mentioned as if they were just supporting players, created for the purpose of serving the earth by giving light and for measuring time. 

The rest of the universe is given even less attention.  It is summed up in just 5 words: “He also made the stars,” (Genesis 1:16).  In the original Hebrew these 5 words are just 2 words.  God inspired just 2 words to describe the stars, galaxies, etc. (99.999+% of things). 

It seems that God is trying to tell us something: the earth is his priority.  It is the center of the divine attention.  Our world, despite its small size in relation to the rest of the universe, is important.   

There is more good news.  Not only is our world special, but we, human beings, are special.  In verse 27 of the same chapter it says, “…God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” 

Man is the only created thing that gets the privilege of being created in God’s image.  What an honor!  The soil, water, sky, plants and animals don’t get the image, only us. 

But in modern times a rival view to this testimony has arisen.  It comes to us in the name of science. 

I’ve encountered some words from the late Carl Sagan.  Sagan was best known as the host of the Cosmos TV series several decades ago on PBS.  He became quite famous in that role and wrote bestselling books on science.  He was, by his own admission, an agnostic when it comes to God.  Agnostic means ‘not knower’.  He did not promote the idea of God. 

Sagan was an advisor to NASA.  He asked if the NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft could take a picture of the earth (it was 3.7 billion miles away at the time) knowing it would not show much, but this, “…was precisely why Sagan and other members of the Voyager team felt the images were needed — they wanted humanity to see Earth’s vulnerability and that our home world is just a tiny, fragile speck in the cosmic ocean,” (from a Nasa.gov article). 

The article goes on to say: “The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan’s book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, in which he wrote: ‘Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us’.”  

The intended effect was to show the insignificance of our world compared to the rest of the universe.  We are just a ‘pale blue dot’. 

But Genesis says we are far more than that. 

While God says we are special, it seems that modern science wants to say we are not special. 

Another way modern science tries to do this is through its adamant belief in evolution.  Evolution takes away the specialness of the human creation, saying we are just an evolved animal, only the most advanced of many animals from a long line. 

But Genesis tells us something different; something much more ennobling and encouraging.  We are different, we are made in God’s image. 

But the evolution belief is very strong today and is quite hostile to biblical creation.  This hostility is seen in recent debates over teaching of creation vs. evolution in public schools.  The evolution side did not even want to allow for mention of intelligent design in the world. 

No intelligent design?  Do they really expect us to believe that complex things like the human brain (more complex than anything scientists have come up with) just created itself?  Does anything else just make itself?  A car?  A house?  Things break down when left alone.  They need maintenance from an outside source.  But are we expected to believe that the most complex thing of all just made itself?

The emphasis on human insignificance seems to be a suspiciously common theme among atheistic/agnostic scientists.  Some are quite bold.  One, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, wrote a book entitled The God Delusion. 

I suspect the headlong rush to try to find alien life might be another strand of this desire to prove our un-specialness.  But despite all the Herculean striving to find even single-cell life somewhere, anywhere…earth has the only life we know of. 

Now, I am not against science or space exploration.  In fact, I have a little bit of a soft spot for space exploration.  My dad was an aerospace engineer.  He had a hand in the Apollo program which put man on the moon.  As a kid growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, nothing was cooler than to have a dad who was involved in that. 

But science and space exploration should lead us to belief in God, not take us away from it.  The vastness of the universe should not lead us to believe that we are an insignificant and unimportant speck in the cosmos, but that we are honored to be the recipient of special attention from the God who made all that. 

Our high and favorable state is also affirmed in Psalm 8:3-4, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Why would anyone turn away from that to embrace a view that says, ‘you are just a speck in the vast universe’?

This brings us to a decision.  Which will we believe, the testimony of atheist/agnostic science or the testimony of God? 

It really comes down to faith.  Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

We have to go with God’s testimony.  It is not only true; it is favorable.