In the course of accepting the 2002 Nobel Prize for Peace, former President Jimmy Carter declared:
From space we see our earth as it truly is — a tiny blue globe, fragile and beautiful, which is our only home. We discern no barriers between races, religions, countries. We perceive the essential unity of our species and of our planet. …
With this vision in mind, we must admit that, like justice, religion is an entirely human creation. Plutarch held that whereas contemplation of the eternal is the object of philosophy, contemplation of the mysteries is the object of religion. Both philosophy and religion represent human efforts to understand the eternal and the mysterious in the universe. In the course of recent centuries, philosophy, comprising mathematics and science confirmed by experiment, has advanced the human grasp of the functioning of life and the universe with a greater penetration than religion. But since both address the same objective, the two must eventually converge as belief and comprehension merge into enlightened understanding. As a foundation for this, proven mathematical equations offer fruitful manifestations of the eternal, and the wonderful fact that the universe is comprehensible remains an evocative mystery.
Felix Nesci, Spacebook
Earth photo by Visual Earth, NASA
