[jeffl]

Quote by: Starboy You can demonstrate that it fell together? Or you just "feel" that it fell together?

Well; there's the 'brain function' thing, which can't now be demonstrated (though there was a nice simulation called NEURON that i can't find anymore), and the clarity of which will be obscured significantly by the imposition of glial cell function through the evolution of emotion; so that's probably out. There's the individualistic theology that would be a natural end result of the dissolution of an ancient consciousness; mithraism was an obvious candidate. Not much that you might accept, i suppose. There is someone who seems to think of Cain and Abel along similar lines as i do; in 'Ishmael,' by Daniel Quinn, i think, the author talks about a community of herders and a community of farmers. He identifies what i might call the body of the brothers; and he neuters them.

Why are organizations that employ and serve millions and in some cases billions of people sociopathic?

I suppose you can look and see for yourself; but there's also a nice objective treatment by Joel Bakan, in 'The Corporation.' It seems corporations are at once defined in law as person and required by law to put the interests of their shareholders before social concerns; hence, sociopathic.

It has been my experience that people of "grounded faith" are far more likely to be deluded.

I would agree with this, and point out that faith in the scientific method is good, grounded faith.

That "faith" is nothing more than an institutionalized double standard.

I strongly disagree. 'Faith,' for me, lies very close to 'hopeful.' In a real life forum with, amongst others, psychologists; it became clear that 'hopeful' is a natural human condition. Would you disagree with this assesment? My point would be that, though it may be an institutionalized double standard, it is more than that.

Perhaps, but it is not clear to me that you even know the most significant value held and practiced by science let alone any other so-called moral of science.

So you admit your error and then attack me personally. :(

Jeffl, I have noticed that you make statements that you clearly haven't thought through. Perhaps you have "felt" you way through them but you have not thought your way through them.

And i've noticed that you say things that might make people think less of me, rather than directly addressing the facts of the matter. Is the periodic table 'thought,' or 'felt.' Did the elements discovered to fill the holes affirm the reality of the periodic table as a viable concept?

There is nothing precluding humans from being hunter gatherers and, as you seem to be saying, ritualistic.

And there's nothing to preclude them originating from alien DNA. Shall we move on?

Perhaps this is a too much to conclude but you appear to have a very proscribed idea as to what ritual is.

I suppose i do. I would hazard a guess that you're simply not prepared to come to any sort of conclusion other than that which can be born out by scientific experiment.
Consider: in order for a signal to carry information it must be unpredictable. What that means is that, to science, information is noise; science misses an important aspect of Being, perhaps thee most important aspect, and that is meaning.