Thread by @sarahsalviander

The black hole epic shows that people have an especially difficult time with anything that is vast, strange, and invisible. It's normal to want the emotional comfort of dealing with what is touchable, visible, familiar, and safe.

But this need leads to an attitude that is a significant part of atheistic thinking and has caused science a lot of trouble: "If I can't see it or touch it, it doesn't exist, and I don't have to think about it."

Black holes explode that attitude by demonstrating in the most dramatic way possible that the universe cannot be understood on those limited terms. Black holes are too big and important to ignore; they force people to struggle with something that stretches their understanding...

...and imagination to the breaking point. Black holes take our thinking right to the edge of the universe, where everything we know ends and the something—or nothing—on the other side is unfathomable.

Black holes are frightening to the point of being unthinkable because they represent the end of everything that is familiar and reassuring.

I’ve talked to hundreds of people about religion, and have come to realize that many of them have the same reaction to God that [others]...

...had about black holes. God is a far greater, far more mysterious and uncomfortable concept than even black holes. We can't see or touch God, but as with black holes, we have reason to believe something or someone immensely powerful is there.

But for many people the notion of God is even more unsettling than black holes because anything with the power to create this universe has to be vast and powerful beyond our ability to imagine.

Excerpt from my chapter in "The Story of the Cosmos."

amazon.com/Story-Cosmos-H…

btw, all but two of the above images are artists' conceptions. Can you figure out which two are real images?