One is an assertion. One is not. One is the absence of a belief while the other is the presence of one.

@Gawd I am not into playing glass bead games. If you are not familiar with the term, read Hermann Hesse's THE GLASS BEAD GAME.

@wordywalt Strange you mention Hesse. He's actual one of my favorite authors. I've read all of his novels and short stories so I know what you are alluding to. However, many people may not so when alluding to something that might be obscure to readers perhaps it would be best to explain what you are alluding to rather than suggesting they read an entire book to understand.

@Gawd If they have not re4ad Hesse, it would be to their benefit and enlightenment to do so.

@wordywalt Agreed. But still I make the claim in clarifying obscure things.

I certainly 100% agree with your statement, "the most rational responses to the staggering mysteries of existence are awe, appreciation and reverence." I would add curiosity and wonder. Both I think steer us in the direction of knowledge. I love the experiences of awe, appreciation, and reverence but they are passive. I think active investigation and the search for knowledge aren't to be omitted. Which in my opinion only add to the experiences of awe, appreciation, and reverence. It is a wonderful experience to sit and look upon a tree and marvel at its awesomeness but can be just as much, or more so, to do the same with the knowledge of the nature of the tree.

@Gawd Absolutely!! Added. I love science and am forever reading popular books in science and trying to read online articles. I do think however that there is a limit to what science can tell us, and that scientific explanations are generally superficial. Scientists like to make mathematical models of observations. Those models are useful in understanding relationships and in predicting outcomes, but they don’t answer the elusive “why”.

Maybe science of the future will have been expanded in such a way that the deeper questions of existence can be studied.

@WilliamFleming Definitely agree. Science seems to have its limits, yet perhaps it just appears that way and maybe we'll expand science in the future as you say to study things we think we can't at the moment. Perhaps we'll never be able to answer everything no matter the technology we develop or time we have but that's still a question to be answered. Of course there is always the possibility that due to our own human limits we will be impeded to answer everything too. Maybe we can develop technology to make up for our shortcomings. Regardless of it all though, the pursuit of knowledge is a reward in itself.