[R]eality is wondrous and mysterious and inspiring enough without needing to gloss it up with fantasies and delusions...
This is a view of our galaxy from a photograph taken in Ontario, Canada:
I came across these images on Reddit, and was absolutely blown away by them. I can't help but daydream a little when I think of how amazing it must be to see our world in this way, not merely as images on the Internet, but in real life. Nothing compares to the raw beauty and intensity of the natural world.
I remember camping trips with my family. I was never a big fan when I was a kid. I hated all the hassle involved with setting up the pop-up camper, the long awkward walks to the showering areas (not to mention the lack of hot water), the annoying insects, the lack of a warm bed... and no TV. I thought I'd die. I wanted to go home.
Then one night my dad and I took a walk through the woods.
We found a picnic table and stopped to rest. My dad stretched out on top of the table and stared up into space. I was scratching bug bites when I heard my dad say, "Son... look up." I craned my neck back and felt my body instantly fall backwards onto the seat of the picnic table. All I could do was lie there, lost in the myriad of stars above me. I'm from Chicago. I had never seen that many stars. I didn't even know that many stars existed to be seen. At the risk of sounding like a failed poet, the only way I can describe my experience is the same way my childhood brain described it then: I felt like I was "looking into forever."
My heart breaks for the scientifically illiterate, for those who prefer to live in Plato's Cave, who choose to trade in their sense of wonder for a security blanket woven out of illusions and false hopes. I may have grown up since that time I spent with my dad staring into the cosmos, but guess what? Because of this wonderful thing we call science, I still feel like I am looking into forever.
The word 'mundane' has come to mean boring and dull, and it really shouldn't. It should mean the opposite because it comes from the latin 'mundus', meaning the world, and the world is anything but dull; the world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.
- Richard Dawkins
