Is Earth Just a Pale Blue Dot in a Vast, Hostile Universe?
If you’ve ever heard somebody claim there is no way there could be a God who created the Earth because why would our planet be such an insignificant part of an unknowably vast, hostile universe, you’ve been influenced by Carl Sagan “pale blue dot.”
You can check it out here from YouTube when Sagan, then probably the most well-known scientist in the country, pointed to a photo taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of 3.7 billion miles away.
The essence of Sagan’s contention about what that photo shows can be summarized as follows: Look, we’re just this little blue dot of meaninglessness. If God intended us to be so special, why are we so insignificant? Ergo, there is no God.
Thanks to his rhetorical gifts, Sagan took the basic idea that Earth is nothing more than “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” and gave it power with that and a host of other compelling analogies.
The “pale blue dot” episode of his “The Cosmos” series on public television remains immensely influential. And it is reinforced mightily in the present by the thousands of fascinating images sent back to Earth by the Hubble and Webb telescopes.
But did Sagan — and millions of other smart folks around the world — draw the only possible conclusion from that Voyager 1 photo?
If you assume that science can only find answers from within the material universe consisting of space, matter and time (SMT) and made accessible to human understanding through physics, chemistry and related disciplines, then Sagan’s conclusion is certainly reasonable.
But what if we do not limit ourselves to explanations requiring a closed SMT universe?
Think about it. Given the existence of multiple billions of stars and who knows how many planets there are in the universe, the utter inability for life to exist in any other presently known part of the universe, what are the odds that by chance all of the factors required for life to exist came together on this planet?
Isn’t it possible the pale blue dot known as Earth is itself evidence of purposeful creation by something not limited by SMT? What if Sagan got it exactly backwards?
Or, as Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace puts it, “if in fact the universe is as hostile as it appears to be, and the odds of life emerging in a universe such as ours are so slim, shouldn’t we consider it miraculous that we exist at all?”
Check out the following Wallace video, which at 28 minutes is longer than those that normally appear here on HillFaith. But Wallace is a master of solving murder cases that have gone unsolved for years, so he knows a thing or three about sorting through evidence.
He has a lot to say on the evidence about this pale blue dot on which we all live:
Just a couple of comments: 1) One can solve the dilemma by stating the universe was created accidentally on purpose. So called randomness is but one tool in the Creator’s toolbox. Also, it gives us our freedom. There is no need for so-called Creationism. 2) If one is antagonistic towards considering our planet and its inhabitants as ‘special’, because it reeks of self-centeredness or something, there are other planets out there. The purpose of the universe is to create beings with what we call “souls”, whatever those are. The universe doesn’t care where they are. It will have them (souled creatures) wherever and whenever it can.
Very good video and nice article, Mark.
I’m sympathetic to the argument you want to make, but this little essay has one deep flaw that essentially invalidates it. This: “the utter inability for life to exist in any other presently known part of the universe”. We only know a teensy, tiny fraction of the universe and even the part we know isn’t as hostile to life as we once thought. There could be life down in the crust of Mars. There could be life on Titan or Enceladus. Given that the incredibly small chunk we know about isn’t all that hostile to life, the rest of the universe could be swarming with living things. Of course, *intelligent* life is another thing.
Also, it’s more that just “billions” of stars and it’s not just the “pale blue dot”. Look at the image known as the Hubble Deep Field. Billions of galaxies, each with many billions of stars. Our insignificance is unfathomable.
If there is a God, it seems to me that the universe was designed to be large and complex and, if life developed, great. As Robert Heinlein said, “what if God created the universe so that He might have friends?”
Carl Sagan was an agnostic/atheist. He also evidenced a profound reverence for nature, a deep humility and relentless optimism that knowledge was attainable and truth discoverable. I wish more Christians shared these qualities.
As for the video, I think it is pretty unconvincing. The universe is hostile ‘hah proof of god’, the earth is fine tuned ‘hah proof of god.’ In particular, the cupcake example was nonsense. The hole idea that certain things had to be magicked for the earth to be as it is and life and us to exist, therefore God, means that if God wants a cupcake he doesn’t actually need space and time to do it. If God uses space matter and time as the raw ingredients of his creation, then it is reasonable to expect that those created ingredients are actually sufficient for the task.
As Carl Sagan said “I you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must invent the universe.”