Beauty

As an atheist, I think I've often struggled to explain to people that a world that has only evolved by chance is not devoid of beauty. There is a beauty in how rare it is that we exist at all. and similarly, there is a beauty in the uniqueness of human interaction.

One of the best examples I have found in literature to explain the beauty of our world is in the graphic novel Watchmen, during a conversation between two of the main characters, Doctor Manhattan (a superhero created from radiation basically, a man that can control physics with his will and generally fails to understand people because of his inability to think without logic) and Laurie (his estranged wife) on the planet mars. After losing Laurie, Doctor Manhattan decides he has noting else tying him to the human race, so he retreats to Mars, Laurie hopes to convince him to come home. Laurie has just found out that her father is in fact a man she has hated her whole life.

I've taken this conversation from a script on the internet of the Watchmen movie:

          LAURIE
          The comedian is my father. I guess my
         life is just one big joke.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          I don't think your life is a joke.

          LAURIE
          Well, of course you're going to say that.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          But I've changed my mind. There are
         miracles in your world that are worth
         preserving.

          LAURIE
          What? But you were saying--


          DR. MANHATTAN
          I tried to explain. Thermodynamic
         miracles--events with odds against so
         astronomical, like oxygen turning into
         gold. I have longed to witness such a
         thing and yet I neglect that in human
         coupling, millions upon millions of cells
         compete to create life over generation
         after generation: Until finally, your
         mother loves a man--Edward Blake, the
         Comedian--a man she has every reason to
         hate. And out of that contradiction,
         against unfathomable odds, it was you,
         only you, that emerged. To distill so
         specific a form from all of that chaos;
         Your creation is like... turning air
         into gold. A miracle.

          LAURIE
          But if my birth is a miracle you, you
         could say that about anyone.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          Yes, anyone in the world. But the world
         is so crowded with miracles that they
         become commonplace and we forget. I
         forget.

         They stand there in silence. Connected for the first time in
          years.

          DR. MANHATTAN
          Now. Dry your eyes.
      

          DR. MANHATTAN
          And let's go home.