We haven't put the puzzle together yet because it would spoil all the fun. Carl Sagan wrote "If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”

I think it does. :-)

To answer your first question, when I have thought I was touched by the Holy Spirit it was similar but distinctly different from what I feel when I hear great music.

For me, absolutely fantastic music such as Le Sacre du printemps IS extra-spiritual but it is more akin to the feeling of a handsome man with strong fingers and glistening dark eyes touching you in just the right spot . Yes… you do get goosebumps. It quickens your breath from a starburst of awareness running up and down your spine and out to the tips of fingers and toes. But it isn’t the same as feeling glorious.

The word you are looking for is “numinance.” Sagan talks about it in Contact (you’ll have to read the book as it isn’t in the movie.) Yes, for me it is felt in music and great art that celebrates the Holy Spirit such as Pachabel’s canon, Michelangelo’s Pieta, or Berlioz Requiem. It is that moment when I pray and feel peace. It was the Bishop laying his hands on my head at my conformation. It is taking the Holy Eucharist and it is probably a thousand other things I don’t understand for people of other faiths and denominations.

Numinance is found by whatever works for you to bring you to it. The most important thing is not to ever knock the path someone else takes to get to it. Mother Teresa said, “I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.”

Did you see M. Night Shymalan’s Signs? Do you want to believe in signs and miracles?

Some people see the way the world comes together as pure luck and others see it as an amazing miracle. Frankly, I found it easier to believe it happened by chance before I learned a lot about the way it all works. What if lightwaves couldn’t travel through a vacuum? What if iron didn’t oxidize? What if the sperm that made you you had been bumped out of the way by another only minutely different? Would it still have been your soul that developed in that fertilized ovum? When I look at these things, I believe. I know that someone there who listens when I pray and it gives me hope.

My belief isn’t a sign that I’m simple. It’s a sign that I’m human. I embrace it as part of the joy and wonder of the miracle itself.

Most people who find themselves raging against “a one-size-fits-all, believe-me-or-burn-in-hell moral doctrine” are really raging against the stifling of skepticism and scrutiny and inquiry that inevitably follow on the coattails of organized religion.

No human being now or in the future wants to get to the party and discover the canon is closed. Those who are not young (and this has nothing to do with age) want the puzzle to be complete and those who are young want to believe the puzzle is still sitting in the box waiting to be put together.

And others of us... just like playing tiddlywinks with the puzzle pieces because we know it bugs the heck out of the other folks. :-)