Oprah Winfrey caused quite a stir last year when she accused swimmer Diana Nyad, a self-proclaimed atheist, of not being able to experience awe. “Well, I don’t call you an atheist then,” she said. “I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder, and the mystery, then that is what God is. That is what God is. It’s not the bearded guy in the sky.”
What exactly is the relationship between awe and religious experience? Is awe, wonder and mystery “what God is”? Or can awe be independent of our view of God?
The challenge is that when we think of “awe,” we often think about two very different domains in which it can be evoked. One is indeed through a religious or spiritual experience. But the other is through the natural world – often times through science.
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