Excerpt from Wikipedia:
Numinosity (Latin numen – deity, will of the gods) is a concept that characterizes the most important aspect of religious experience associated with the intense experience of the mysterious and terrifying divine presence. This concept was introduced into scientific circulation by the German theologian and historian of religion Rudolf Otto, who used the Latin word “numen”. The ancient Romans called Numen a powerful divine force that powerfully controlled human destiny.
Numinous experience is directly related to the feeling of the divine, that is, the mysterious, communication with higher powers, the manifestation of miracles and other properties that are associated with God. Speaking from the point of view of atheists, numinous experience manifests itself in the form of inexplicable, random, non-repeatable phenomena. A large part of the numinous is communication with God – prayers, through which requests and appeals, words and feelings of gratitude, joy, respect and admiration are conveyed. On the communication side, numinous experience generally favors the person having such an experience, since the person who turns to God asks for favorable things. At the same time, difficulties should be perceived by a person as challenge sent by God. And some of the troubles that God sends are actually the solution to other problems. For example, you were late for a plane that crashed. God’s punishments and power should instill fear and fear of God as almighty, but still God is merciful, and people look to him for grace and salvation.
The peculiarity of divine phenomena is that he appears to people individually, each in his own way. And in this there is a clear and vivid manifestation of people’s individualities, their personal life experiences, feelings and perceptions, views, principles and habits. In the philosophical understanding, the uniqueness and individuality of each person is expressed in an extreme degree of subjectivity. The effect of individuality is manifested in the fact that each subject has his own distinct opinion regarding justice and truth, and this significantly affects the way of thinking of each person. Subjective truthfulness and a sense of justice, of course, does not mean that everything said by a person is the truth, both in content and in the way of conveying this point of view to society. Nonsense, stupidity, lies, foolishness, incorrect conclusions, inability to draw conclusions and other negative phenomena of thinking remain in force, and do not depend on the role and significance of the subjective in thinking.
Atheists say that the divine is an illusion, an invention of man himself or the ideas of society. That this is a created image that does not really exist. That it is a maximization of what they want to see and an imposed image, for example, by fictitious religious texts, which in turn are myths.
If we accept the arguments made by atheists, then the very fact that so many people believe in God and the divine realms as supernatural forces means that we need to consider the very belief in them as a psychological need for humans. And, by the way, it takes to respect such a need, but not as a deviation, but as a feature of human perception of the world.
In this, numinous experience is radically different from the experiences of the scientific world, which are clearly defined, described in mathematical and logical language, which are expressed in a physical, chemical, mechanical basis (mechanisms). This is why the divine sphere and the scientific sphere are opposed. However, this does not mean at all that all natural events can be clearly described in strict mathematical language. For example, weather phenomena have a strong probabilistic nature: the formation of clouds, thunderstorms, tornadoes, earthquakes. That is, the lack of study and unstudied nature of natural mechanisms may come from the fact that they may not be studied, for example, due to insufficient research of phenomena (transcendental knowledge), but they may also be unattainable – unstudied in principle, if they are based on multiple stochastic phenomena, such as Brownian motion, which cannot be predicted with certainty or sufficient probability.
As a result, terms are born that need to be connected with each other. One of them is opportunity. It is a property of some object. For example, a gun may (or may not) fire. Or the wheel may roll. Or the glass ball may break. But they can do this with some probability under the influence of some event. Uncertainty is that this event may or may not happen.
Uncertainty is the possibility multiplied by the probability of an event. Or uncertainty is a combination of an event as a basis for possibility, combined with the probability of its occurrence. Basically probability is defined as an external factor that is independent of a person because we assume that a person has free will.
Numinous experience from a person’s point of view is located in the area of his own internal mental (thought) reality. In it, a person thinks in images and verbalized words in natural languages. Images are largely individual, subjective due to the individuality of perception, and not all images can be described in words. Therefore, the numinous and numinous experience, as people understand it, belong to an area that is poorly formalized. In other words, it is mysterious and transcendental.
A few words about free will. It exists within certain limits – if a person is tortured, caused suffering and pain, forced, then he will agree to what he would not do in his right mind and having freedom. This rule applies not only to the negative influence of people, but can also be the reason for the current circumstances: if there is enough money, a person may not think of stealing food, but in circumstances of great need, when the life of a person or his children is at stake, he will be forced to change the rules and principles: necessity and justice come to the fore.