Arising out of a discussion with Kerri, I talk about how we pretty much agree on what is happening in the physical world but disagree on what is to be done. On the other hand, Liberal Democracy assumes that some general agreement should exist on what can and should be done , including freedom of choice, association, and speech. I mention the connection between Islam and the European enlightenment. Religion is constantly changing, even though it claims to be somehow continuous and "eternal", which boils down to accepting the culture they were born into as their idea of what should be done. Shouldn't religions agree on a wide range of issues? In theory, shouldn't we agree on what is virtue? Isn't it true that most practical disagreement is based on philosophical differences? How is it that some see skin color as a threat? This would seem to be totally cultural  - a first-class example of how our "enhanced" experience of reality differs. --- I mention the ...

For the moment, let me talk about the world of human experience as "E". The world that Science investigates is assumed to exist a part from human experience , although we can only know it through human experience. Without really thinking about it, we imagine the "real world" to be about the shared experience: verifiable, consistent and augmented by what we call "reason". But we have long admitted that Universe, which I will call U, is not the same as "E". In fact, we assume that we can never know "U" entirely, directly or completely. We all know that "E" is not the same for each of us. In fact, it is quite remarkably different between different cultures and different times or even for a single individual throughout his or her lifetime. The question at hand is, is there anything "out there" apart from E and U? In most religious traditions the answer is "yes".  Most religions postulate a universe in ...