Being freed from superstition isn't enough for science to grow. One must also have the idea of interrogating Nature, of doing experiments. - Carl Sagan

Modern Roman Catholicism has no quarrel with the Big Bang, with a Universe 15 billion or so years old, with the first living things arising from prebiological molecules, or with humans evolving

Perhaps the most wrenching by-product of the scientific revolution has been to render untenable many of our most cherished and most comforting beliefs. The tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors has been replaced by a cold, immense, indifferent universe in which humans are relegated to obscurity. But I see the emergence in our consciousness of a Universe of a magnificence, and an intricate, elegant order far beyond anything our ancestors imagined. And if much about the Universe can be understood in terms of a few simple laws of Nature, those wishing to believe in God can certainly describe those beautiful eyes to a Reason underpinning all of Nature. My own view is that it is far better to understand the Universe as it really is than to pretend to a Universe as we might wish it to be.

And after the Earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it is burned t a crisp or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being- and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth