Did you know
1. There was once water on Mars and Venus. Maybe even life too. Millions of years before life on earth. But I don't think discovering life on these planets would stop people from believing in god(s). We didn't even know about Uranius and Neptune before the telescope. Religions told us we were all there was. Just our inner solar system is what they said. They were wrong, but people still believe. That's brainwashing. That's power. That's control.
2. We've only been able to detect the planets of other stars for a few decades, but we already know that planets are plentiful & they outnumber the stars. Almost all of them will be very different from Earth, and hostile to life as we know it. But what do we know about life? We've met only one kind so far. Earthlife.
3. Each galaxy contains billions of suns and countless worlds.
Yet, the entire Virgo Supercluster itself forms but a tiny part of our universe.
This is the cosmos on the grandest scale we know a network of a hundred billion galaxies.
4. Back in 1599, everyone knew that the Sun, planets and stars were just lights in the sky that revolved around the Earth, and that we were the center of a little universe, a universe made for us.
There was only one man on the whole planet who envisioned an infinitely grander cosmos.
And how was he spending New Year's Eve of the year 1600? Why, in prison, of course.
5. Copernicus made a radical proposal. The Earth was not the center.
It was just one of the planets, and, like them, it revolved around the Sun.
Many, like the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, took this idea as a scandalous affront to Scripture.
And this is who you want me/us to believe? This is who your religion comes from, right? But again, I don't think people care. Cognitive Dissonance.
Isn't the universe an awesome, elegant place that God created for us to discover?