Science and Religion cannot overlap.

[Whateverist]

*P.S. Just a note on my own 'existential crisis': for me that followed the development of a profound sense of the numinous that just wouldn't fit in with the atheistic world view I had at the time, but I also realised I could never (and still cannot) be certain that this subjective experience reflected reality. Faith, for me remains a commitment in the presence of uncertainty much more than a certainty in my life, but it is a commitment which has made more and more sense as I have journeyed onwards (and still journey). That sense of the numinous for me started after I started simply sitting in silence (in a church I used to walk past each day), so to this day I remain much fonder of silence as a path to God, rather than being an enthusiast for preaching, apologetics, or philosophical arguments for God.

I wonder if it matters to you that God be an entity unto itself or if you would consider the possibility that God is a layer of being within everyone. Given the experience you describe here it seems to me that the numinosity you experienced could be explained equally well either way. To my mind, the second possibility seems less extravagant in the demands it makes on my reason while fully accounting for the experience itself. I also don't see how it diminishes God if that is understood to be a primordial otherness within. A presence that is intimately aware of your subjective struggles by virtue of making them possible. There is something that makes our normal sensibility, our conscious minds, possible. We don't (almost by definition) consciously do that. The ground is prepared for us by ancient, transitional forms of psychic experience which are more generic than we are, less individuated. They are like the titans of Roman mythology which perform grand, essential tasks like holding up the heavens. In that sense, they do 'create' the universe, at least as we experience it. They also stand watch over our affect and insight, granting or withdrawing these for reasons that flow from a logic unique to themselves. I believe this model can pretty well account for most of Christianity and other religious beliefs too. If God is conceived of as 'on board', what really is lost? You might say then God is only in our heads, but then so are we.