Thank you, Ricmat! Lovely, lovely, lovely!
Oreo, I would say that these photos are a phenomenally important addition to the philosophy section. It tells me that, since there are already some 400 exoplanets discovered, and that life as we know it on Earth has recently been found to take a remarkable number of forms, not necessarily dependent on sunlight, eg, life around black smokers and microbes deep in the earth, we have some questions to answer.
Since Catholics and other religious groups have a “great commission” to spread the Gospel, and the Church is involved in both science (the pope scope, eg) and, unfortunately, missionaryism, hadn’t it, and the other missionarying faiths better get busy building rockets to spread the word? Since we now know that there are exoplanets, and that it won’t be long before we are likely to discover even Earth-like planets, is the Church remiss in not having some sort of space program, (great idea for a new thread!!) ranging from rockets to studying the possible methods of teleportation or levitation as demonstrated by some saints?
Think of all the work ahead: There are probably more “class M” planets out there than there are people on Earth. So there has to be a mass program for converting the damned to Catholicism and then sending them as missionaries to the new planets as they are discovered.
The benefits will be enormous! As missionaries leave the Earth in droves, the effect of population growth is reduced and the over stressed biosphere has to support less and absorb less of the garbage we are excreting into it and ourselves. The human seed will spread throughout the Universe and we will not have to worry either about immediately impending doom on our planet due to our own extravagant efforts to kill it, nor will we have to be concerned about future cosmic disasters that might destroy our fragile home world. And none of that includes the untold billions of souls that will be save due to our efforts! Think how proud Jesus will be at the success of His work! And think of what will pour into the coffers of the Church!
