I should add that I’m agnostic as to the actual reality of things, and a perspective that has felt useful to me is to remind myself that the fields of science a

I should add that I’m agnostic as to the actual reality of things, and a perspective that has felt useful to me is to remind myself that the fields of science are a map, and that there are portions of the map that are just completely undefined. We know there’s a terrain to explore, but haven’t made much progress in increasing the fidelity of that portion of the map. What I do know is that the fundamental Christian version of beliefs leaves a particularly shaped imprint on the psyche, and my relationship with what I thought myself to be started shifting/expanding when I started diving deeper into these unexamined “mystical” notions and having those notions confront the scientific view. That confrontation is what leaves me agnostic. As the map gets better and better, it’s seen as more and more acceptable to look at that map as if it provides ultimate answers. But it still has nothing to tell us about primordial existence. Consciousness sits in the same category of unexplained and possibly unexplainable. Who knows. Maybe all matter truly is conscious and the spectrum of available conscious states scales with the complexity of the matter’s configuration. In either case, I don’t feel that a purely mechanical explanation is necessarily relevant to the question people often claim it answers. Looks like a good thread. Thanks.