God looked at the billions of stars pouring out their light, and it elicited from Him a spontaneous exultation over what He had made: “Tob!” Essentially good and beautiful! He didn’t merely evaluate the precision of His handiwork; He made an aesthetic assessment of it all. He declared that it was beautiful by His divine definition and delightful to His divine sensibilities... Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous atheist philosopher, who insightfully noted that the basic philosophical problem is that something is there rather than nothing. To his observation, I would add this question: Why is what is there so beautiful? If the mere existence of matter confounds us, explaining its universal symmetries and harmonies is baffling. Matter is a problem. Beauty is a marvel.
~ Steve Dewitt; Eyes Wide Open
