The subject of necessary awe is still one of the most fascinating subjects to me when it comes to my dialogue with those who do not hold to belief in God. The basic question is this: if awe was not there, if it was stripped away, proven to be false, not attainable, would we still live the same way? This has always seemed to me to be the question that gets us closest to some sense of transcendent and foundational truth across that divide:
“Most of us find it difficult to recognize the greatness and wonder if things familiar to us.
The biblical man has not forfeited his sense of radical amazement. That “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder” was stated by Plato and maintained by Aristotle. “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.” To this day, wonder is appreciated as semen scientiae, the seed of knowledge, as something conducive to cognition, not indigenous to it..Wonder is the prelude to knowledge; it ceases, once the cause of a phenomenon is explained.
But does the worth of wonder consist merely in its being a stimulant to the acquisition of knowledge? Is wonder the same as curiosity? To the prophets, wonder is a form of thinking; it never ceases. There is no answer in the world to ultimate amazement.
What is so wonderous about the world? What is there in reality that evokes supreme awe in the hearts of men? (In the prophets) it is proclaimed not as a messianic promise but as a present fact. Man may not sense it, but the seraphim announce it.”
- Abraham Joshua Heschel (The Holy Dimension)
The Stories of my Life 