I suspect, Ebb and Mrzzy, that this is a far slipperier slope than it seems to be at first glance. The reason is that just as there are those who go overboard in assertions of spiritualism, so there are those who go toa materialistic extreme.

I, too, find these mocked-up cosmologies annoying when they are injected uninvited into the commons of ordinary physical transactions. But asserting that we cannot afford the luxury of tolerating imagination about the universe is inviting an awful darkness, no matter how well-intended. It is not a luxury, but a compelling necessity, that individuals in society be free to dream and imagine unconstrained. All of our greatest voices drew from that well, and the fact that some idiots also do does not serve as reason to fill it in with dirt.

What we should never abide is the notion that any crime can be justified on religious grounds. Or, for that matter, any civic tort such as burning chickens in your driveway.

A