> This may be true in principle, but your whole argument falls apart because religion does make assertions about the real physical world. They (taking here the

> This may be true in principle, but your whole argument falls apart because religion does make assertions about the real physical world. They (taking here the example of Christianity) they postulate miracles, divine intervention, life after death, an unlikely and unsubstantiated cosmology, not to mention of course stories about the creation of the universe or biblical floods... I don't think you could have articulated my point any better. The so-called "assertions"[1] you're talking about are narratives that came well before the scientific method, including presumably your conceptual understanding of the whole model of a "real physical world". So, therefore, at least for your examples here, there is no way that religion could have been making these "assertions"[1] in the way that you're talking about. [1] Also this word "assertions" is so grounded in this narrow (but extremely useful at times) scientific/propositional/static worldview. Science derives value from "assertions", "axioms" etc. The religious derive no value from static "assertions"; for the religious the value is in a dynamic mimetic process to the characters and narratives of their long-evolved spiritual texts & scriptures. We are so deeply entrenched in this "static" view of "assertions" that for many, many people it is the only way to "see" the world. But it is a narrow, severely incomplete picture of the world -- and, of course, extremely useful at times, but extremely narrow as well.