I've read the book Contact by Carl Sagan as an assignment for a university course. My reflections about it follows below.

Carl explicitly show us how different and still how similar the role of religion and science can be to people with completely contrary opinions. Both the ones with a religious view as the ones with a scientific view of life are seeking for the truth. But you could ask yourself what is true and what is faith. We are given the power to think, and to analyze. By that we are able to learn. In my opinion we should not blindly trust anything. What we have accepted as our truth should also be subject to reassessment and not stay the literal truth forever. But how do we know what is the truth and what's just believes shaped by our minds? There are truths like the law of gravity which most people believe in. This law is true as long as you stay on Earth where we have gravity. This truth is lost in space. Did Jesus walk on water? It's true if you ask a Christian but not if you ask a Hindu. The religious person might call a revelation for truth. While the man of science might call it an invention. No matter of what the believer call their truth, it for sure serves a purpose as it gives hope to the practician. What could be learned from this book is that most people seek the truth and we have to respect others' believes to peacefully live together.

Below is an excerpt from the book which I find interesting and because it puts focus on the issue.
"The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation."
(Sagan C. Contact e-book edition, p. 105.)

Many people experience a strong reaction when they think about the greatness of outer space or extraterrestrial life. One person in this technical English course even said that he felt schizophrenic when thinking about it. When I think about extraterrestrial life my spontaneous reaction is that it would be a terrible waste of space if there were no aliens out there. If we ever meet an alien civilization, I hope to be there to see how the communication runs.