Perhaps the more wrenching by-product of the scientific revolution has been to render untenable many of our most cherished and most comforting beliefs. The tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our own ancestors has been replaced by a cold, immense, indifferent Universe in which humans are relegated to obscurity. But I see the emergence in our consciousness of a Universe of a magnificence, an intricate, elegant order far beyond anything our ancestors imagined. And if much about the Universe can be understood in terms of a few simple laws of Nature, those wishing to believe in God can certainly ascribe those beautiful laws to Reason underpinning all of Nature. My own view is that it is far better to understand the Universe as it really is than to pretend to a Universe as we wish it might be.
Whether we will acquire the understanding and wisdom necessary to come to grips with the scientific revelations of the twentieth century will be the most profound challenge of the twenty-first.
- Carl Sagan
After reading some of GK Chesterton I've begun to question inferences such as the one above. The inference seems to be that science reveals the universe to be truly magnificent and infinite in its appeal. But upon further scrutiny this inference appears to be only a little less anthropomorphic "our most cherished and most comforting beliefs" like belief in God. In some sense, it's a sentiment, unsupportable by real world evidence, more reliant upon human imagination and emotion than "the Universe as it really is".