The Pale Blue Dot

I was looking at the Astronomy Picture of the Day archives. Somehow, in doing that I ended up on Wikipedia at the article on the rings of Saturn. In that article, someone filed a wondrous photo, taken by the Cassini space craft in 2006. The photo shows Saturn eclipsing the sun, with the rings in high relief. Out toward the edge of the rings is a “pale blue dot” which they tell us is Earth.

I’ve put the photo on the blog. I’ve labeled the Earth for your convenience. I’d like for you to look at the photo for a moment and think about this place we call home. Astronomer Carl Sagan coined the phrase “pale blue dot” based on a photo taken by Voyager I from about 3.7 billion miles away. You can see the photo and accompanying article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_blue_dot

Mr. Sagan believed that this photo only confirmed what he knew…that there is no God and that we are truly alone in the universe; that if we are to survive, we will have to save ourselves.
Others may well look at this and other photos and believe quite the opposite…that there is a God and that we are never truly alone in the universe; that we cannot save ourselves and must rely on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for life and salvation.
I don’t know enough to know how to convince a skeptic or a non-believer to change how they view photos such as this. I’m not even sure I know enough to intelligently talk with someone who doesn’t believe in God to convince them that God does exist. What I do know is that some how, some way, there has to be an explanation for what we see and know (and all that we can’t see and don’t know) that has as its explanation something other than chance.
We’ll never really know, in the full sense of the word, which way it really is. That’s why faith is sometimes so hard. And we have it easy compared with those who have come before us who had only traditions, oral stories, and the wonder of the universe to point them to faith in God. We are indeed blessed.