Avowed Atheist, Profound Theologian

 One of the central touch-stones of Christian faith and of Catholic theology specifically, is "mystery." We call many things a mystery, but the word is rarely defined.

The avowed atheist Richard P. Feynman, one of the most brilliant physicists of the 20th century, understood what a mystery was much better than most theologians I have met:

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. 

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. 

It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts."

 As Feynman further explains in this clip below (titled "On Magnetism"), the essence of mystery is simple: "That's my idea, that the deeper a thing is, the more interesting it gets [at 3:40] ... I'm not going to be able to give you an answer... I really cannot do a good job, any job, of explaining... [or] give you an explanation in terms of something else you are more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else you are more familiar with."

Mystery is not confined to theology. It permeates everything we try to understand. Feynman was an avowed atheist, but an excellent theologian.