Here's a quote by prominent atheist Richard Dawkins that I ran across a few years ago, and which provoked a strong response that I'm still trying to quantify. He says, "An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles — except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don't yet understand. If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful."

It's really the last sentence that gets to me. "As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful." I'm not sure whether or not I agree with that. My initial reaction was that the mystery of whatever beauty we're contemplating makes it that much more majestical. But, upon reflection, I realized that the more I know about something, the more I appreciate it when there's an exceptionally fine example of it. For example, being a violin-player, a virtuoso violin performance gets more awe from me than a virtuoso trumpeter, although both musicians might be of the same calibre.

But, returning to the question, knowing that a rainbow consists of light refracted through water droplets at such and such an angle--does that make me enjoy the rainbow's beauty more? Am I more in awe of the precise conditions necessary to produce this wonder? Or does that take away from the magic and mystery? Is a certain amount of mystery necessary for beauty? Is anything beautiful that we can fully understand? Can we actually fully understand anything? And is there a danger in continually thinking that there's some true "real" behind the easily observable real that we think we see?