Nice essay. I think most people deal with this “shrinkage” in their capacity for wonder by going out and having children of their own: this provides a kind of “wonder by proxy”. Of course, some adults deal with this psychological loss in other ways, principally the use of alcohol, narcotics and psychostimulant drugs.

I can’t figure out what precisely the following sentence means: “To appreciate the odds against the early big bang being smooth enough to give rise to a universe as rich in information as ours you have to wrap your mind around this number: one, followed by a thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion zeros.” What precisely do you mean by the big bang being “smooth”?

You remind me of my father. He was a devout Catholic but I remember when we went on walks on clear nights he would often point up to the stars and say: “How can anyone look at all those stars, son, and say there isn’t a God. There must be a God. There must be!”. I’m still not sure whether he did this for his own reassurance or as a pre-emptive strike on my own nascent agnosticism. If the latter, then the poor man failed abjectly.

Regards,

John