I like to think of our social ties and obligations as a series of concentric circles with family and close friends at the core, acquaintances in the next circle, and so on, with sentient creatures on the outer most ends. We should strive to broaden our concerns to each succeeding circle. But it'll take some time, and for many of us, they won't get out of the inner core. Think Sam Harris might have introduced this concept to me once. As to the benefits that religion does provide to group cohesion, I do think there are better reasons with more benign results that could be substituted for the religious ones. But that's another, far, far longer, conversation.

Oh, and Ross, last summer, my wife and I finally made it to that university of yours in New Haven. The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History was wonderful, gotta return! Turns out evolution really happened and dinosaurs didn't walk the Earth with us! Those presently trudging to Boone County Kentucky's Creation Museum might consider getting the true story.

Peter T.