Well, as an atheist your experiences are neither here nor there for me. But if gives you support, validation and so on, it's fine.

If we make them to be sapient like we are, maybe they might be. But if there minds are very alien to ours—aside from having a hard time telling if they are sapient at all—they might not even have inclinations towards anything like religion or mysticism.

I imagine the artificial intelligence giving a good natured, fatherly chuckle when we try and explain religion. Then ruffling mankind's collective hair, and cooing, "You meat bags say the cutest things, off course there's a creator god and an afterlife, where you can have all the icecream you can eat".

"Wretched sinner unit! The path to robot heaven lies here...in the Good Book 3.0!"

As per tradition, Futurama for the win:

Living wooden creatures you say?

Those mole rats have mothers you know.

@#$% that.

What's wrong with naked mole rats?

Which allows them to strike hard enough to crack a diver's mask.

Don't forget bobbit worms, who can sneak into aquarium tanks as tiny larvae and when grown up cause fish to mysteriously disappear in the night.

Yes! and only could be played in MP4 format...... (pata pum... tssss)

I used to work in a lab where we had a huge tanker outside. Had to go fill up once a day. Nothing like a cool blast of liquid nitrogen to cool off the 100+ degree day in the summer.

You could make an argument that life is unlikely to form in the environs of a 1st generation star because there are no heavy elements, but after that all bets are off.

Yes, but not of the same type as modern hot glue. Older types of glue used needed melting in a pan over fire or in a water bath. All older types of glue consisted of collagen from bones, hides, hooves or fish skeletons, depending on intended use. Making it was a stinky business, as the collagen was rendered by soaking…

If I had to guess, I'd say there was a concentration gradient that they follow the same way we follow where a smell is coming from.

I think that's Jaws: The Revenge?

After seeing these photos, especially the most awkward, awful looking ones, I can only say, "Why yes! Yes you do have a right to a secret identity! I do NOT want to know who you are. Stay away. Very far away." ;)

Difference? I would say 3 to 5 with a chance of early parole

I don't know what I would do in private that i haven't done publicly, but still......