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To explain how I feel about outer space and how it shapes my worldview, I have to start with one of my favorite Bible verses: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour (Psalm 8:3-5, KJV).

Although Im a graduate student in theoretical particle physics, not astronomy, both give me a similar feeling: that we human beings are set among a seemingly unfathomable universe, one that I believe is divinely created for us, and despite our tiny size among the cosmos, we can begin to comprehend it. With our God-given reason (one of the things that I believe makes us in the image of God), we can model and measure things like black-hole collisions and the afterglow of the Big Bang despite our tiny position among it all.

Understanding physics and astronomy is the closest I believe any human can come to doing magic, and taking something that seems impossible to know, like measuring the speed of distant stars and galaxies, yet making sense of it, is an incredible feeling. When I consider this in the context of my faith, I believe that understanding the laws and behavior of the universe is one of the few times we can directly observe Gods handiwork. Indeed, looking up at the night sky, I see that humanity is crowned with glory and honour.

Despite sharing Carl Sagans sense of awe, I strongly disagree with significant parts of his prescription for how we should be humbled by our tiny place in the universe. No one claimed humanity is special because of its size. We human beings are tiny, but the things that make us uniquely humanour curiosity, reason, and understandingstretch across the limits of the physically observable universe. Because I believe the universe was intentionally created for us, I also believe its physical laws were made by God for us to discover. So, as a theoretical physicist in training, I intend to take God up on his offer.

But there are still things in science that make me humbled about humanitys place in the universe; theyre just in quantum mechanics, not astronomy. For all that astronomy gives me pride in when it comes to what humans have been able to understand, quantum mechanics throws understanding back in my face and, like God speaking to Job out of the storm in Job 38, tells me that there was never any promise that the universe was made so a human mind would be able to comprehend all of it.

What I value in humanity is not our size, but our minds (among other things), so when physics tells me that our understanding has seemingly insurmountable limits, that is when Im humbled by our place in the universe. Outer space gives me pride in humanitys scientific power and understanding; it gives me something visible that I can begin to wrap my head around and beautiful images that let me soak in the glory of creation. The realm of the very tiny is what inspires in me fear and trembling at Gods work and at human limits.

More here:

The Surprising Compatibility of Science and Faith - The Atlantic