100% agreed about the format. We really should have retreated to our own blogs a long time ago :) I suspect that no deep satisfaction will really be had here.

100% agreed about the format. We really should have retreated to our own blogs a long time ago :) I suspect that no deep satisfaction will really be had here. But it's been enjoyable and entertaining, that's for sure. language allows us to describe and converse to some degree about this while having a common understanding. That's a neat thing about language and the power of the human brain, for sure. We can probe into the unknown to make stories, and then reason about the world in which those stories would be true, and then test to see whether or not we live in that world or not. Sometimes, it takes quite a long time to figure out if there would be any differences to be tested. But "truth" is an emotionally laden term both sides use. How about "it just works"? And so instrumentalism enters the discussion... We ARE getting into deep waters here! And with your question of how to find morality, ie, "it's not all supposed to be taken literally" I have no idea what you are talking about. I was referring to your comment about the conquest of universal concepts of morality and faith over political, tribal, and primitive power systems -- the species learning what part of God-belief is critical to its survival and what is not. I don't consider morality a "part of God-belief", but apparently you don't either, so I seem to have misunderstood where you were going with that. My bad. I simply stated that a God-belief may be as genetically useful as rationalism. What if God-belief was an emergent property resulting from other beneficial traits, but not itself beneficial at all? For example, our mucous membranes, social customs, and fondness for living indoors are all---themselves---very beneficial traits. However, together, they make us very susceptible to the common cold, which is definitely not beneficial to us at all. Likewise, our agent-fixation, our creativity, and our way of passing wisdom on to our children are all beneficial behaviors, but together, they open the door for bugs to creep into the system. Science is our unit-test framework :) Love Buddhism, from what I know about it. Wonderful ideas in there. Wish I knew more. Nothing stopping you :) The science of spirituality is a very interesting subject, which has sadly been stymied in the west by the success of Yahweh. For centuries, to avoid being persecuted, scientists have had to avoid any subjects that might impede upon religion's "magisterium". If the two do not overlap, it is only because religion has been so aggressive and successful in defending its turf.