I sometimes wonder if religious people genuinely grasped how awe-inspiring the scientific explanation of life is, would they be atheists? It's true that a scientific view doesn't provide consolation or promise of an afterlife, but I think what it does offer far outweighs these things - a sense of sincere privilege to be part of a universe where, despite the astronomically small odds of us existing, we burst into consciousness thanks to an unbroken chain of events in our ancestral history. It blows my mind to think that the specific nature of the occurrences of all past events brought each of us about; I think it's a thought which should make one feel incredibly special in spite of our individual insignificance in the universe. The thought is made all the more amazing when you consider that our existence is owed to a chain of events in an uncaring universe where there were no laws or destiny governing the unfolding of events. The past could have unfolded in an infinite number of ways, yet it happened in the exact way to bring us about, and here we are, thinking, breathing, feeling, living beings conscious of the whole process. Ah, it's just beautiful.
"The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun." - Richard Dawkins
