Agreed, Bill. Let's put it this way...if I were trying to solve a crime, I would look for physical evidence, and anecdotal evidence of witnesses, and I would also look for those imponderables (such as motive or motivation of the criminal)...depending on the situation. If I were searching for gold in the ground, I would look almost entirely for physical evidence, I suppose. If I were searching for the meaning of life I would consider physical evidence as part of the picture, all right, but I would mainly be looking for things I cannot touch physically...I would be looking in the realms of allegory, metaphor, emotion, thought, moral tenets, spiritual ideals, parables, and so on.

Those are mostly things one can have opinions about, but not prove. One can try them out over a period of time though, and see how they work in practice. If they seem to work well, then that is proof enough for me.

The great philosophical questions are what fascinate me.

Is everything alive? (I think so.)
Is everything conscious in some way? (I think so.)
Did all this happen by accident or by intention? (I think the latter.)
Is the Universe mostly dead matter or is it manifested consciousness? (I think the latter.)
Is life essentially good? (I think so.)
Are people essentially sinful? (I think not.)

What a person believes about such things is important, because his conduct tends to flow directly from what he thinks. So too for a whole civilization. A civilization which does not see importance in anything but itself and its own creations is a dangerous civilization...headed for a fall. Nature does not tolerate such self-centredness forever...not because Nature gets angry, but merely because it always works to maintain a balance. When things get too far out of balance Nature brings about a re-adjustment.