This is an excellent piece, Benjamin. I would only add (or see) in your humanist ethics that, because we have evolved as creatures who seek to know nature including ourselves vis-a-vis the universe, we use our imagination (as you say) within our actual experience of ourselves in action in the world. I call this approach “existential phenomenology.” I also argue for a moral consciousness which the French call “conscience,” which is the experience of our selves acting and therefore measuring ourselves in relation to who we think or profess or want to be. Moral consciousness or conscience is a natural base for human moral decision making in personal and collective affairs.

One can say that this ability to consider our behavior as in line, or not, with our own intentionality derives from evolution or from God. I don’t need or want some words from a sacred book from authority up-there. And when I consider such claims or lessons from secular or religious stories, I check with my own experience and expressions of others with whom I live, trust, and act on order to adopt, reject, interpret, or change them.

But I’m okay with those who do make such claims in their private sphere. Expressions, whether considered secular or religious, are disputable and improved with more experience and discussion. But as an advocate for pluralism and democracy, I believe that human experience, reason, and action, not divine revelation, is the basis for rules in the public sphere., e.g. abortion, war, poverty.