It's becoming common for people to try to identify something we know exists -- the universe, or consciousness, for example ... as god. That way you can say, e.g., the the universe is god; the universe exists; therefore, god exists.

Often, this is a trojan horse; once you agree that this proxy for god exists, then they often pivot to talking about a more specific god, such as the Christian one. You've agreed that god exists in concept, now you get hectored about a particular god existing.

I'm not following your logic here.

sometimes it seems that many of us seek to frame something outside of ourselves, to put at ease the question, "is this all there is to it?" so various words become the names of those frames.

Science doesn't require our belief and will carry on doing it's thing regardless of what we think, or don't think. It fails the definition of a religion on every count.

Science is not a religion in any sense that I can think of. We don’t worship science or scientists, and they never try to recruit acolytes. Consciousness is just another word for awareness....so again I can’t see how that could be compared to god, I just don’t think your whole premise makes any sense. I have never believed in god and always believed in science as science only means truth and the search for answers. We will never have all the answers of course, but the search for the meaning of everything and truth will still go on.