I think he was just trying to be understood, not looking for universal approval.

Correct. In fact, I expect disagreement on some of the points. But in the previous thread, I recieved confusing (to me) responses to my posts, and realized that I was being misunderstood. So I took the time to step back and clarify my own reasoning before making any more attempts to communicate my specific points.

It was an interesting exercise, because I first just started listing about a dozen "I believe ..." statements in an outlining tool, and then I started to see a hierarchy of beliefs, and rearranged the points in a proper nesting. Once I had the nesting, I knew how to explain it better, and that resulted in the post at the head of this thread.

Are they all valid beliefs? Hard to say. Like every belief, I will find a world that correlates with that belief, opening some doors and closing others. Do I like the world I live in? If so, keep the beliefs, and if not, discard them. I'm very pragmatic that way. {grin}