snip: I’m telling you that the simplest answer is usually the right one, and the simplest answer is: the world is what it is. You make the best of the hand you’re dealt, and when you die, it’s over. Personalities are indeed just part of your chemistry.
Spirited: The simplest answer is not a belief predicated upon a need to explain away man’s soul, mind, conscience, and free will.
The simplest answer is the one embraced by the Founders, which they defined as “self-evident” truths. Self-evident in that man really does know that he thinks, makes choices, and feels guilt. There is no way except by willful self-delusion that man cannot know these truths.
At bottom, both rationalist materialism and pantheist vitalism are alternative salvation systems. Salvation is not BY God the Father but FROM Him. It is had by either explaining away or denying the existence of mind, soul, conscience, and free will. Scrooge was a rationalist materialist. When Morley appeared, Scrooge tried to explain him away as indigestion caused by a bit of bad meat.
America and the West are even now experiencing an occult revival. Some of the world’s most powerful leaders have spirit guides. The UN has become a veritable temple of spiritism. Occultism always signals the end of a civilization.
Very dangerous times lie ahead. Your denial of a spiritual reality will not save you from its effects, or from the forces behind them. They are there whether you believe in them or not.
Ever talk to these folks? It's fascinating, it's well-thought out and complex. It's just all in their head, is the problem. I've talked to others who have very detailed and documented evidence that aliens have warned us that Planet X is going to create a gravitational pull that will draw our galaxy into a nebula that will create such global catastrophe that most of us will die in 2012.
Religion is a series of stories that each generation adds to, tweaks, refines... witness another poster that gave me a hierarchy of souls and spirits in plant and animal life. Is that in the Old Testament? No, they're probably taking what they like of Hebrew lore and mixing it with a little Celtic or Native American... whatever. Each generation takes its parents stories and alters them a little, making them their own. Fine with me, as long as I can live my own simple life a safe distance from your highly-decorated and ritualized dramas.
Christians are only a mild annoyance. It's the muslims I really don't like, for reasons that I'm sure are obvious.