Our ancestors worked on it for a thousand generations, struggling, praying, moving forward. They learned painful lessons and slowly scraped together wisdom...

After commenting in an earlier post about how a religiously-informed set of moral values isn't necessary for a healthy human society, I spent some more time thinking about it, and I think the biggest flaw in my argument is exactly what you've written here. No, religion hasn't cornered the market on Viable Societal Organizations - but if you aren't going to tap into the thousands of years of empirically-derived evidence regarding what is healthy for individuals and societies, and what is pure poison for them - well, you'd better be awfully wise, then. Because a society deeply rooted in its history (which a religiously-rooted society is, by definition) isn't going to battered about by every breeze of foolishness that comes along, but a society that rebuilds itself every 20 years most certainly will be.

And a beautiful thing about societies deeply rooted in religion is that each individual doesn't need to recreate the wheel - doesn't need to understand the full history, the reasoning and choices and experimental results that went into shaping the beliefs and structures. Most folks just want a happy, healthy family, and for the Reds to beat Houston, and I think that's wonderful (especially the part about the Reds!) - in the end, that's really all I want too.

All that being said, I still think those core religious values are of value only insofar as they tap into natural truths, not theological truths; and insofar as they provide a reasonable surrogate for folks who aren't all that concerned about rebuilding the world. But I ought not just reject them as superfluous out of hand...

My guess is that religious truths and natural truths are not really two separate things, but rather one and the same. And that they only seem separate because we've been brainwashed into the Enlightment's splitting of things into natural and supernatural realms.

No one before about Descartes would have divided things up into a "real" world and a spiritual world which may or may not be a fantasy of those who are "superstitious."

Perhaps you are more religious than you realize, and I am more "rational" and scientific than I realize...

Natural vs. religious truths was a poor construction on my part...what I meant was, stuff like "premarital sex is sinful" is an example of something very useful for society; stuff like the Aristotelian metaphysics underlying trans-substantiation is not as useful for society.

I will fully admit, though, that I've completely divorced the spiritual from the natural. Catholicism in particular is wonderful at knitting the two together, and were I to turn back to religion someday, it would without a doubt be to Catholicism. But at this point, I just don't see anything that tells me God exists - and nothing will divorce the spiritual from the natural as effectively as denying the existance of one of the two! Well, perhaps someday...

Since weigel is describing a European problem we should look for its source in European thought, specifically in the words of Wittgenstein: "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen", "Of that which one cannot speak, one must passover in silence." Nothing that cannot be expressed as words and relations between words can be reduced to true or false, and so cannot be said to have meaning. Metaphysics is meaningless.
Perhaps what Europe is suffering from is life lived and society organized with Wittgenstein's dictum in mind. Maybe they have got it exactly backwards -- there is no truth and no meaning in the absence of metaphysics.
I like to contrast one English translation of Wittgenstein's words- "Of that which one cannot speak, one must passover in silence" with Gen 1:2-3 "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."