Aweism

Please read the link, and then read on, if you like

This is a 'religion' of sorts, and the word was first coined by Phil Zuckerman, who wrote the piece that is linked above.

Zuckerman quotes Einstein

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emo­tion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-­out candle.

This awe is the essence of aweism. The words associated with awe have been corrupted. Awful. Well, now that means terrible. Awesome. Now, that's just a slang term for "really good". Awe-inspiring is closer, but that's still not quite it. I could go to the roots and say awegenic. Causing awe.
The universe causes awe. In grand and tiny scale. But, I'll use awe-inducing.

The other day, my 7 year old son decided my new nickname is Tyranadadus Rex. That's awe-inducing. The universe was formed out of a dot of incredibly hot, incredibly dense matter, billions of years ago, and that's awe-inducing on the grandest scale there is. Flowers' petals follow the Fibonacci series. Stirling's formula says that

n! is approximately equal to (2*pi*n)^0.5(n/e)ⁿ

Hummingbirds flap their wings at 10 beats per second.

We find love in the universe.

Zuckerman then says why he doesn't feel 'atheist' or 'agnostic' or 'secular humanist' fit him. As I read, I found myself nodding. Yes. That's me. Atheist - OK, but what DO I believe? Agnostic? That carries connotations of not being able to make up your mind - that is not my position.

Aweism is the belief that existence is ultimately a beautiful mystery, that being alive is a wellspring of wonder, and that the deepest questions of life, death, time, and space are so power­ful as to inspire deep feelings of joy, poignancy, and sublime awe.

Understanding does not diminish awe, if anything, it increases it. Love between parent and child springs from some incredibly complex interaction of nature and nurture; evolution, neurotransmitters, brain chemistry and perception, and ... does this diminish our awe? Not to me.

Like Zuckerman, people have often told me that I am spiritual. But that's not it. That always feels wrong to me. It isn't what I am. It's not about God or another supreme being; it's not about a higher power, or something mystical or super-natural. I don't think there is *anything* that is supernatural. But nature itself is super.

My outlook is very scientific.

In the discussion at the link above, there is a link to wonderism which is certainly close to aweism. But I like Zuckerman's description of awe-ism slightly better than the definition of wonderism found here.

I am an aweist. It's good to know.