When I was a lad, back in the 50s and 60s

[MineralMan]

it was believed that we'd never be able to see individual atoms. They were just too small. A lot of people probably believe that's still true. It's not. There are images of individual atoms available for viewing at the search of Google images. There's also this little movie, created by scientists at IBM a few years ago, where individual atoms are moved around to create a stop motion cartoon.

What was once not known is now known. What could not even be imagined by Old Testament peoples is now so easy to see that cartoon characters at the atomic level can be created. This is amazing enough, but we've advanced beyond that, too. Just watch, as "A boy and his atom" lets you look at a world made of individual atoms:

We keep getting closer and closer to the truth, and at all scales from the atomic to the universal. We're getting closer to actually understanding the origins and make-up of our universe.

[longship]

1. No gods/creators necessary.

Don't you just love the god of the gaps arguments?

They are what ol' Snagglepuss would describe as self-inflicted barbecue, they cooked their own goose.

Exit stage left.

[thbobby]

2. Don't know

We can see an image of what atoms look like. But, what about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? Are the particles of the atom really there (and what does there mean?)? Will they be there in the next instance of time (and what is time to an atomic particle?)? Are they truly fundamental or are they composed of smaller parts? Can a cloud of particles be meaningfully distilled in an image? So many questions. We want to understand the subatomic world based on our experiences of the world we can see. Are we even able to imagine what the subatomic world is? Our best understanding of the subatomic world is a statistical analysis of what may be beyond what our mind can even ask meaningful questions about.

What is unknown and what is unknowable? I believe the answer to this question is itself unknowable. The quest for knowledge must continue and is noble, but we are still well short of knowing what we do not know.

[safeinOhio]

3. Life Is a Journey, Not a Destination.

The finding out and going OhWow is what makes it worth while. We seem to find the more we know, the more we know we don't know.