Virtually everyone at one point or another has stood in awe of nature and its beauty. The fact that “beauty” is even a category of nature is itself something to ponder. And it is the sheer beauty of it all that makes most people consider the cause of it all.
What is beauty, and why do we recognize it? And how are we to think as human beings about the beauty we see?
Consider the following two quotes:
When we share evidences for creation, we can get so caught up in obscure details that we miss the obvious. God made his handiwork so clear that even a child can see it. The beauty of His work is inescapable—and an undeniable witness to His existence. Answers in Genesis, citing Romans 1:18-20
And:
I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this, I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this, Einstein felt it. We, all of us, share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life. For the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it’s tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator. Richard Dawkins, God Delusion debate, quoted here.
What do you make of these two quotes? Which one resonates with your experience?
What is your favorite quote about nature and creation?
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