Excession ... very well laid out. I think that in the overall you are coming from the POV that as a system reaches a certain level of complexity, it may spontaneously produce it's own awareness, such as we are hoping to see from a self-aware computer, etc. Also, if I have you right, it would be as if this self-awareness is in fact some type of mirage or illusion. In this way, an organism evolves an adaptive (but unrequired) means of survival.
BK ... As someone who is currently at the higher levels of academia, I'm getting that you are saying that science today is not what it once was. Is it true that the scientific method is somewhat more inclusive these days to seemingly random links, and statistical type inquiry? It seems that whereas prior, the criteria was to prove a hypothesis, the goal now is rather to take a hypothesis and disprove it. (Thus narrowing down explanations.) Is that essntially correct?
T-Rod ... I think it would be fair to say that you come from the POV that "Spirit knows spirit." In other words ... we can talk all we want, but a spiritual issue can only be understood on a spiritual 'plane'. For you, it came with a declaration from your (beautiful) wife which bypassed all of your rational defences and cut through to the deeper essence of you ... thus also causing you to reconsider your entire life in a new way. Forgive the cheesy analogy, but much like the moment in the Karate Kid where Daniel realized that everything he was learning from the wiser Miyagi was not what he thought it was all along. Yeah, yeah. I was reading about the movie last night so it's fresh in my mind. ;p
On a personal note T-Rod ... my personal POV is while you may or may not have found the true God, you have most definitely come to a deeper relationship with your true Self ... or to look at it this way ... the scriptures say that the Holy Ghost lives within you (in a real way, right here and right now) ... and I believe that you have reconnected to that source of your own being. i would speculate that you are far more comfortable with your own feelings and soul than you were in your twenties, where the ego ran amuk a little bit. When I walked away from fundamentalist Christianity, I opened myself up to other spheres of this expression, and have come to appreciate the understandings of other cultures regarding this same experience, most specifically within the writings of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Screw Confucianism though, bunch of pansies.
I took a lot of time to consider that "If you see the Buddha coming down the street, run away. It's not the Buddha." Or in other words, we project out our own internal spirituality and inherent one-ness to external things, whether that be an idol, a bible, or anything else, when in fact the very source of it all comes from your own core. What I'm essentially saying is that I truly believe (as you) that "God is in you.", but also that "the finger which points to the moon (in this case the bible or Christianity) is not the moon."
More later. Now breakfast.
