About sums it up…
For my part, I’m a second-generation atheist. I think that our experience of the numinous is both undeniable and entirely biological: the state of spiritual peace is the result of tickling some evolved center of our brain, a bit of neurology that conferred a survival advantage on our ancestors whose numinous hallucinations of a higher order in the universe drove them to catch more antelopes, eat better, and have more babies. I have no need of, nor interest in a supernatural god or a supernatural universe.
I had attributed to “numinous” a different meaning than most of those given…I like the word, so I will apply MY meaning – which is what I feel when I look at the Hubble images…awe and wonder. Those images involve neither a supernatural god nor a supernatural universe, but rather, a natural universe and the works of man to see it. The malign, destructive god of the bible shrivels to nothing in the face of the natural universe.
Or maybe they caught more antelope, etc. because the numinous saved them the effort of trying to figure out rational explanations for things.
I don’t know whether that’s inspired or just mildly deranged…. Alas, look who’s talkin’.