Also, admittedly, I am unjustifiably attached to that area of my map. It's going to take a while to figure out why I am so attached and what I can do about it. I am not fully convinced that rationalism is the silver-bullet that will solve Life, the Universe, and Everything. I am not letting this new thing near something I hold precious. This is a selfish act and will get in the way of my learning, but that sacrifice is something I am willing to make.

I have had a theory for some time now that people confuse "God" with "good[ness]". They seem to believe that if you don't believe in God, then you don't believe people can be good -- you don't believe that goodness exists in the universe. (As just one small bit of evidence, look at all the creationist arguments which arguably boil down to "if evolution is true, then the universe is a bad place, and I can't believe that, so evolution must be wrong.")

This is, of course, utterly untrue. Goodness does exist, and you don't need to resort to spirituality if believing this is vital to your sanity, because the evidence also shows it to be true.

(This somewhat opens another can of worms, i.e. what if science did show a really depressing universe that we're not emotionally equipped to deal with? ...and, is it rational to embrace rationality just because it happens to prove what we'd like to believe about the universe anyway? Or maybe science does actually show us a pretty scary, dehumanizing universe -- it's just not an impossibly scary, dehumanizing universe and certainly not as scary and evil as the "all goodness comes from God" hypothesis would make it... in which case embracing rationality still seems the most rational thing to do -- just not the easiest.)

(...and you thought you were getting too "meta".)