Enlightened? Really?

I read an article Jason Kottke wrote the other day on Kottke.org

Direct Quote from Carl Sagan, Contact:

At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population had abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that only ended with the dawn of space exploration.

Kottke also has a link to an article from the New Yorker here

The question has been going through my mind for a while as to how we got so far away from believing God and His word (the Bible). How has it become so difficult for us to accept that there is a God out there. One who has a personality, One that is so much larger than we can comprehend, One that loves us so much, and then there it is, one of the smartest men out there writes about how we’ve migrated to cities, pollution has taken effect and essentially we cannot see the handiwork of God any longer. No wonder we rely on our human abilities so much, we are the self-made culture. We’re constantly surrounded by things that men made, there is no real daily reminder of God and His awesomeness. There’s a yearning to go out and see Him be with Him, which is why so many people love going hiking, camping, getting out of the city in general. We yearn for it, to be reminded of Him, but so many have forgotten Him and His love. They’ve never known His love and so when we catch glimpses, they ultimately fade away.

So what’s the answer? He tells us in the Bible, these are the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 7:7 - “Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened for you.”