Quote Originally Posted by Acouwaila
another thing that makes me kind of sad....is when most people look into the sky at night and see stars....sure...they all say its beautiful...

but I mean...isnt it mind blowing? I mean think about what you are looking at......
I know. It's the whole freaking universe! The sun is not just a light. It's a gigantic nuclear fireball bigger than we can possibly imagine with our puny monkey brains at a distance greater than we can possibly imagine with our puny monkey brains.

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." -Douglas Adams

And when that Sun begins to set, we see a bright light in the sky near it. That's the planet Venus. Besides the Sun and the Moon, it's the only celestial object you can see during the daytime. If you know exactly where to look, you can find it in the right conditions while the Sun is still up. The surface there is so hot it's melted all the probes we've sent there. And even though it's the size of Earth, it's so far away that it is just a point of light to us. That's pretty mind-blowing right there.

But once the Sun completely sets, then we see an even bigger picture. There are more suns out there than we can possibly imagine, most with their own planets. If it's dark enough, you can see the Milky Way galaxy, the giant swirling mass of suns whose suburbs we inhabit. And if it's really dark, you can even see our closest neighbor galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy.

I think the reason a lot of people are attracted to the idea of an infinite God is because it makes them feel small and humble. But you don't need a God for that. Just look up at the sky. I don't think it's any coincidence people have associated this humbling God idea with the amazing vastness of the heavens above us.

"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. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and, I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." -Carl Sagan