Dear Marion,

As I re-read our most recent exchange, it occurs to me that
there are yet further essential considerations worth making
explicit. Our respective arguments appear to me to fit
seamlessly together. You receive the Hebrew tradition
as a phenomenon of biological evolution. Our beliefs,
you argue, were selected because they favor the survival
of those who entertain them. I'll leave that argument on
the table so to speak, for further scrutiny, but I have
no stake in controverting it. You seek to explain Judaism as
a "natural" phenomenon. I don't object. I'm not concerned
to demonstrate the "supernatural" origin of Judaism or of
any other religious tradition. (The circumstance that I fail
to recognize a distinction between "natural" and "supernatural"
is irrelevant to our discussion and is no impediment to my
accepting your argument at face value.)

My point was - and is - that whatever the provenance of the
belief in the Hebrew God, his "omniscience", his totalitarian
accountancy, the circumstance that he registers every gnat
and every minnow, that he counts the feathers on every bird
and the hairs on every mammal, establishes for those who
"believe in" him a metaphysical reality, i.e. a reality 
not otherwise demonstrable. (The identification of such a
reality is the central thesis of Leibniz' Monadology and
of his Differential Calculus.) It seems to me that an unbiased,
unprejudiced observer will conclude that the hypothesis of
such a reality is in fact integral to modern science, and
that far from contradicting, our respective arguments in fact
complement, each other. If God, as you postulate, is an
expression of human thought which supports the survival
of those selected (read chosen) people who "believe in"
him, then the circumstance that, as I argue, the "belief in"
him provides an assurance of universal reality, virtual or
otherwise, is perhaps of much greater "survival value" than
the postulate of an admittedly largely dysfunctional family
relationship.

I'd like to think that I make myself clear, but I have
my doubts. Permit me to say that although I have no stake
in controverting your argument of religious Darwinism, i.e.
of the characteristics of the Hebrew tradition as supportive
of "the survival of the fittest," I believe your argument
subject to the challenge that the period over which this
tradition has evolved is much too brief to admit of biological
evolution. I surmise, rather, that "Religious Darwinism",
if I may coin the term, like "Social Darwinism," is itself
not canonical science, but rather a facet of religious
propaganda, fashioned to propagate a quasi religious faith.
I have no objection. I'm reminded of an apothegm by the
romantic poet Novalis: Wo keine Goetter walten, walten
Gespenster. I've come across no description of dinosaurs
that I find more persuasive.

Jochen