The universe is too vast for human beings to matter

Why this feels so overwhelming

Looking at the night sky, or images from space telescopes, can make anyone feel tiny. Blaise Pascal, writing in the seventeenth century, confessed that "the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." Modern astronomy has made the scale far more staggering. It's natural to ask how we could possibly matter.

Size isn't significance

We don't usually measure importance by size. A child is more valuable than a mountain. A single human brain is more complex than a galaxy of gas. Pascal himself, right after confessing his fear, wrote that a human being is a "thinking reed": weak and small, yet greater than the universe because we know we are dying and the universe knows nothing. Consciousness, love and moral choice are of a different order from mass and distance.

The universe may need to be this big

Physicists point out that a universe capable of producing life may need to be vast and old. Heavier elements like carbon, needed for life, are made in stars over billions of years and spread through space. A smaller universe might not last long enough or contain the right ingredients. So the vastness might be a condition for our existence rather than evidence against our importance.

Vastness says something about God

If God made such an immense universe, that says something about his greatness, not about our smallness in his eyes. The psalmist had the same feeling thousands of years ago: "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers... what is mankind that you are mindful of them?" (Psalm 8). The answer the Psalm gives is that God does care, and has crowned humans with glory and honour. A God big enough to make galaxies is also big enough to know each person.

The Christian claim is stranger still

Christianity says more than that God cares for us. It claims God became a human being on this small planet. That's astonishing, but it fits a pattern: in the Bible, God repeatedly chooses the small and overlooked, a nomad, a tiny nation, a baby in a stable.

A fair concession

The possibility of life elsewhere raises interesting questions, and Christians have different views on it. It doesn't seem to contradict the faith, but it's an open area.

How to explain this to a friend

A friend who feels tiny under the stars is touching something real, so start there. Then ask whether we measure worth by size. Would a child be less valuable if the universe were bigger? Most people instinctively say no. You can share Pascal's image of the thinking reed, small and fragile but greater than the universe because it knows and loves. That often resonates more than any argument.

The bottom line

Size isn't significance. A child matters more than a mountain. The vastness of the universe may say more about the greatness of its maker than about our worth. For more, see Why are we here?