What a weird world we live in.

I am an atheist (albeit I support our national churches/religious entities and believe they should be state financed) and it is fascinating that I agree with Leo XIV on an ethical, moral and even theological/spiritual level.

P.S. While I don't believe in a meta-physical, abrahamic tradition-style god, I do think there is a lot of wonder, beauty and even sacredness (divinity) to the cosmos. Something along the lines of this quote from a book by Alan Watts:

The universe is the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe. And you’re not something that is a result of it. You’re not something that is a sort of byproduct of it. You are it. It’s like when you take a bottle of ink and you throw it at a white wall. Smash! And all the ink spreads out. In the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns.

So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are the little fringes on the edge of that bang. We are the way it’s going now.