> but the sense of awe after giving sufficient consideration is difficult to differentiate from feeling god
Do you think that, in a universe with a proven-real, interventionist diety—picture, say, the Architect in the Matrix—that "feeling god" would really be a feeling of awe?
I'd personally expect it to be mostly a feeling of fear, at how insignificant and easy-to-accidentally-kill you are.
Imagine the feeling of being made aware of an entire galaxy, one containing quadrillions of lifeforms, getting sucked into a black hole.
Imagine the feeling of knowing that if you ask a question, a million consciousnesses might be created and then destroyed in order to answer it.
In short, imagine the feeling of someone else having an omnipotent magical genie.
Feeling at one with the flow of the universe is, to me, the exact opposite of "feeling god." It's feeling that we're operating in a system with a static set of rules; a feeling that nobody has the capacity to declare humanity forfeit by fiat (but instead has to "work for it" through regular physics, in a way that we might be able to defend against through other physics); etc. It's a feeling that the universe is a fair game rather than a rigged one, at least on the quantum-chromodynamics level.
Do you think that, in a universe with a proven-real, interventionist diety—picture, say, the Architect in the Matrix—that "feeling god" would really be a feeling of awe?
I'd personally expect it to be mostly a feeling of fear, at how insignificant and easy-to-accidentally-kill you are.
Imagine the feeling of being made aware of an entire galaxy, one containing quadrillions of lifeforms, getting sucked into a black hole.
Imagine the feeling of knowing that if you ask a question, a million consciousnesses might be created and then destroyed in order to answer it.
In short, imagine the feeling of someone else having an omnipotent magical genie.
Feeling at one with the flow of the universe is, to me, the exact opposite of "feeling god." It's feeling that we're operating in a system with a static set of rules; a feeling that nobody has the capacity to declare humanity forfeit by fiat (but instead has to "work for it" through regular physics, in a way that we might be able to defend against through other physics); etc. It's a feeling that the universe is a fair game rather than a rigged one, at least on the quantum-chromodynamics level.