I respect your opinion. I also respectfully maintain my own.
As to your civilization/war examples: you omitted one critical element: the spirit and will of the people fighting. Even if every religion and all things supernatural are hokum, the spirit and will of the people is critical for a civilization’s survival. Agreed?
If you disagree, then may I suggest reading any serious book on warfare that teaches victory is only achieved by breaking the enemies’ will to fight? Try Sun Tzu, which is still required reading at our military academies. BTW we as a nation have forgotten this (even though our military is taught it before being fed a bunch of PC hokum), which is why we keep losing wars after utterly dominating on the battlefield.
For some people, in fact most people, faith is critical to maintaining such spirit and will.
>>As to your civilization/war examples: you omitted one critical element: the spirit and will of the people fighting. Even if every religion and all things supernatural are hokum, the spirit and will of the people is critical for a civilization’s survival. Agreed?
Yes, absolutely. But we really need to define “spirit”. Your example here is the result of inspiring leadership, strategically adept leadership, tactically savvy leadership, training, more training, and a cause that is truly worthy. This has little to do with the religious sense of “spirit”. But elan alone won’t capture the enemy flag. You need experience at skirmishing, flanking, signals, timing, good maps, decoys...in short: operational readiness. Any fighting force with certainty that its leadership will not waste lives, will be dangerous.