Kallog-- Would you define 'an imaginary model of reality' and explain how that imagination is different from the imagination that underlies the search for answers that fuels religious and artistic thought please?

There is nothing 'special' about the creative 'scientific' thought. The original impetus to go to the moon owes as much to romantic yearning as it does to hard science.... actually perhaps more, for example the yearning for space, for flight, for exploration that powers scientific discovery is based on altruism as well as fact. It's only much later that research grants become more important than ideas as motivation.

Similarly religious thought is motivated by the need for knowledge. Why do we exist (or as Rev would say-- why ARE we)? Where did it start? Is there a maker..or not etc; These are all creative exploratory thoughts and many people believe that that answers will be discovered one day as scientific facts. I just see a similarity in both groups.

And not only the religious believers are rattled by uncertainty, it unsettles and motivates many scientists too.