“The entirety of our observable universe is an irrelevant pocket of dust in the wider cosmos, which extends way beyond the visible horizon and is conceivably infinite in extent, and I think society has come to terms with this sort of physical irrelevance. It’s hard to look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image, containing over ten thousand galaxies in a piece of the night sky you’d cover very comfortably with an outstretched thumb, and feel important. Our spiritual demotion, however, is an entirely different matter. By spiritual demotion, I mean the realisation that our very existence has no more significance than our physical location. This is surely the case if life is the inevitable result of the action of the same set of natural laws that formed the stars and planets. Earth must be one of countless billions of living worlds in the Milky Way galaxy alone. This is absolutely not to suggest that our civilisation is not worth celebrating and fighting to preserve – it is my view that civilisations may be extremely rare, even if life is common.”