Beautiful quote about wonder in the absence of belief in God

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have this remix by John Boswell stuck in my head for the last few weeks. It’s made from quotes of from Sagan and Hawkins.

“A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way”

…who needs fairies in the gardens when this is the real world?

22

I’m not keen on the term “creation” either-- it implies agency and purpose.

23

Particles did not come out of the blue. They may be residues of exploding stars or whatever experts say.
(Here is the hen or egg dilemma again).

24

I like Douglas Adams’ quotes about Space and the size thereof;

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, Douglas, you are missed :frowning:

25

Reminds me of Carl Sagan’s quote, which I love,

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”

I never even heard of that quote until I heard the song “Symphony of Science”.

And I never heard that song until I learned of it here on the dope. So, another reason why I loves me some Doper nerds.

26

Sorry to double post, but I missed the edit window. I just want to point out that in hiding has already quoted ‘Symphony or Science’.

27

These are fun. Thanks, all.

In case anyone is counting, I’m another who would prefer a word other than “creation”. Sure, things get “created” all of the time, but I doubt that is the main definition that would occur to a majority of folk. Kinda like capital C “Creation” as opposed to lower case “creation”…

28

Another beautiful Feynman quote about the wonders of science:

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is ‘mere’. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part… What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent.”

29

Cute, but I’m more impressed with the nihilists who simlpy don’t give a crap. They may not be hapier, but they are more honest in their athiesm.

30

Not necessarily. “The tilt of the Earth’s axis creates the seasons.” “Lightning creates thunder.” “Bad weather created high seas on Wednesday, making it difficult for ships to dock.” The words create and creation don’t reference a conscious agent as explicitly as you might think.

Just a thought.

31

I like the end of Dawkins’ “Unweaving the Rainbow”:

“A Keats and a Newton, listening to each other, might hear the galaxies sing.”

32

Suck on that, Walt Whitman.