"Now, I suppose there are those who can say that myth is unnecessary because they have other ways of appreciating the beauty of the universe. Those who don't understand or appreciate poetry or art, can say the same about poetry and art."

Er, I don't think that anyone is saying that myth is unnecessary. It's the extrapolation of myth into religious tenets that creates the sticking point. I think you're making a false equivalence when you compare myth-to-religion with poetry or art. In the latter two there are flights of fancy, along with music perhaps the highest achievements of human imagination, but there is the full expectation by the artist (provided he hasn't been bought off as a proselytiser: many an artist has been bought off, of course, as they have to make a living, but all the ones we regard as the greatest have managed to retain their integrity) that disbelief will be suspended and that the recipient will be complicit in that. With religion, disbelief is expected to be scrapped. In leaving myth as just myth, without the religion, then for sure myth can be set alongside poetry and art. But you're not really defending just myth here, rather the extension of myth into belief. Two very different things.

As for choice and morality, that's a very interesting path to go down. To take an example, unless I should become severely mentally ill, I am not capable of choosing to commit child rape, let's say. So to say that morality must have an element of choice is at best moot. Yes there are people who commit child rape and no-one here is going to deny the immorality of that. But, to even out the supposed choice element, we'd have to plunge into the absurdity of saying that not committing child rape is moral. Well not committing child rape is just normal. There's no choice available to most people. The choice concept is very skewed. Of course, there are far more marginal cases in which the choice becomes almost a dilemma. We know that producing meat on today's scale is unsustainable for the human race and the planet, and I know that I eat too much meat. So my wife has just presented me with a surprise bacon butty. It would be very easy for me to choose to not eat it, but then I'd offend my wife who's gone to the trouble of making it for me. In absolute terms the moral thing to do would be to not eat it on principle. To overcome that inclination and eat it just to show appreciation would be slightly less moral.

DMcG, you were correct in your interpretation of my use of speech marks. The examples I chose are real ones, and the speech marks were intended to avoid the anthropomorphism you demurred at.

I've eaten the bacon butty, by the way. Discuss.