[cropcirclbureau]

Excellent points and I believe we all live and have always lived with poorly examined belief systems but I think the cynical assumption that folks have a slot for magical fantasies that they'll drive hard during crisies to be but unfair. Not untrue but unfair. It tends to ignore the amount of effort that went to maintain and enshrine these intricate ontologies of the past. It tends to blow past how much of a vehicle they were for other values of societies it reiged in. It underestimates the social functions of having common perspective play out, especially during times of crisies. And most of all, it forget that for a lot of people, they didn't have much evidence to the contrary. I'm not saying that you need modern science to see the magical aspect of some past system of beliefs but they were not exactly like the religious subjects of the modern age

I suppose neither you nor GP claim that most people have this "slot for magical thinking" but I find these properties of the religious thinking that I list above can be fulfilled by perspectives that aren't necessarily magical. And I dare say, such perspectives have supplanted them in general. I guess I'm replying to the adage "everyone has some religion." My reply being, "are you sure that's a religion?". Forgive the hazy brain rant.