In peaceful moments when my mind is clear i become aware of my own experience and the passage of time independent of what my specific experience is at that moment.
I consider this to be a religious experience.
Also, it seems to be the only thing about me that is consistent over time. Certainly I do not now think the same way I did when I was 10 years old, nor do i look the same, or want the same things. My memory connects me more to that 10 year old then other people, but even my memories are suspect.
Through my empathy i can recognize that the experiences of other people are similar in this regard, and so i feel the distinction between myself and others is arbitrary. In this way i can transcend personal identity, and death.
No gods. No afterlife. No reincarnation. No fairy tales.
Scientific models help us by giving accurate predictions, but they are not the only models worth considering. Other models present an ontology that gives meaning to our experiences. People who consider money to be valuable accept the ontological authority of the market place in much the same way that catholics accept the ontological authority of priests over which crackers are the flesh of god.
I don’t think it is reasonable to say the laws of physics are part of the territory. The territory, or at least the closest we can get to it, is our direct experience. Any physical model is a map of the territory that we have created from our experience, some may be more accurate then others, but all are still maps. Scientists didn’t get rid of the haunts and gnomes any more then relativity got rid of Newtonian physics. It just described them more accurately. There is a real difference, though, between these models beyond accuracy, and that is weather or not the haunts have experience. Surely I feel the wind as it blows over my skin, but does the wind feel me passing through itself? Scientific descriptions of the wind make it seems like it does not act with intention, which seems to suggest that it does not have experience, but our understanding of experience is still limited.