Thanks for posting your very reasonable view on this Scott, it mostly makes sense to me too. Somehow the problem between Israel has to be sorted.

On the passage you quoted from Allan Watts, I think I am mostly a fan of him too, though I've never read any of his things, (My bad) what I've heard others say and quote from him seems mostly pretty cool.

But this particular passage you quoted from him seems flawed to me.

There has to be statistically some cases where belief and faith are aligned.

In fact I'd argue that it is maybe aligned any time anything of note is achieved, by a scientist, Engineer, or creator of any kind, (Or even a bank robber!) given significant hurdles had to be overcome to achieve the end goal.

We simply would not embark on, or continue on any project that we had a crisis of either faith or belief. I woud say we need to have both to press on with anything at all that has significant challenge.