Thanks for your reply and encouragement. Forgive my rudimentary musings. The EP concept is compelling, but I find it shakes my very roots! As to my embryonic thoughts on the god-concept, PA's, order and morality...If religious practice "encourages reciprocity within a group whenever its size is too great for mutual face-to face monitoring between individual members" (Brody), could religious practice be considered a PA? Could we take it a step further and say that religious practice may also give some a sense of meaning or purpose, for living beyond mere survival? Is mere survival enough, and could religion promote long-term reciprocity and altruism, therefore keeping us from killing each other off when diving in the snack bag for the last snicker bar, (unless, of course there's a famine). Could we then consider the Bible a comparative study in changes in religious adaptive behavior over the ages. For example, in the Old Testament, citing accounts of Cain and Abel, (populations low), and "an eye for an eye', as compared with the New Testament accounts of "love one another as I have loved you", to say nothing of 1 Corinthians 13 (moral code as populations grow). Will "man's next step" (Couch) be to find a replacement for religious practice if and when this practice no longer promotes optimum genetic survival, regarding reciprocity?