One reason is there's always an "explanation" or an "answer" to the things that seem amazing. And the "explanations" become the salt to bland chicken or the acid to the akaline; it neutralizes whatever wonder that we may have for the world.
There are of course other causes to this difficulty in belief like the deceptiveness of the world and the mind-numbing variety of sensory stimuli by material things. But let's j
ust focus on the first reason: the neutralization of WONDER.
It is so hard to impress people nowadays. Smug with "intelligence", wrapped in apathy and numbed by the world, people find it hard to believe in something greater than they or to simply feel amazement in a joyous form.
My question is this: Is it that hard? To believe, to be amazed, to wonder and to be humbled...
The advent of science, like a constantly accelerating locomotive that pushes the world towards the speed of light has given us explanations to many things in everyday life. Why are there clouds in the sky? Why does the sun rise and set? How can we generate electricity using a metal coil and moving magnet?
In the process, people just started to think, "That's it! Nothing more than heat causing water molecules to vibrate faster. Once the water molecules are energetic enough, they'll escape from the surface of bulk water. That's boiling water!" Nothing more... That's the attitude that supposedly kills wonder and amazement in this day and age. The world is no longer wonderful and amazing, it's just like any other machine with bits and pieces that "happen" to work together to result in phenomena seen in everyday life.
"it's gonna take much more than that to impress me!"
Often it feels like it would take a feat of Everest-scales to impress and convince.
This is my assertion: Although science has provided us with many "explanations", contrary to popular opinion, that does not in any way diminish the wonders of life. ( I know many people will agree with this statement. But it's because it "sounds right". That is not what I want. I'm looking to look at it more closely than that.)
To illustrate my point, I'm not going to try to raise every known example. That'd be an impossible task. Not just for me, but for blogspot's server as well. What I'm going to do is to pick an example everyone knows; an example so simple that everyone can experience simply by lifting their heads (and hopefully their hearts) to the sky.
Clouds...
Clouds are essentially congregations of water droplets in the sky. They're white because of the way sun light is scattered off them. Because of their size and the amount of water vapour, light of all frequencies tend to be scattered evenly in any direction. They move around by being pushed around by wind (i.e. moving air). When they get too heavy, there is an avalanche of water from the sky.
This is pretty much clouds for you. (I ask the forgiveness from those better informed than I for my description) That's about it as far as their "mechanism" is concerned. However, knowing how they "work" doesn't make them trivial. In fact it makes them all the more amazing.
The fact that such masses of water can be suspended in the air (after all, we now KNOW that they are not fluffy cotton balls but water which is really heavy). The fact that they not just float, but move. The fact that they form part of the Earth's irrigation system; a way of delivering massive amounts of water. The fact that beyond the nuts and bolts of knowledge, they are such beautiful things. The fact that beneath all this there is a governing set of equations based on thermodynamics, mechanics and electrodynamics, concepts which are universal and based on rationality.
Isn't it amazing? Something as "commonplace" as clouds can be so complex and can embody beauty and physics.
My point is, you don't have to climb Mount Everest to find belief and wonder. It's all around. Just step out of your door and open your hearts and eyes. You'll find amazement everywhere. In the rising and setting of the sun. In the change of the seasons. In boiling water. In birds flying.
All you need to do is take a step further from what you think you know. Isn't that amazing?
