Lou, I am claiming that you cannot proclaim the virtues of conservation based on materialist beliefs alone. You wrote: "We should accept the worldview that best agrees with our current evidence. Honesty is the best policy in conservation. And the best evidence we have today is that Darwinian evolution explains all the beautiful forms of life on this planet, including our own." Again, I ask what does your statement about evolution have to do with the concept of beauty or establishing conservation priorities? How is any ethics derived from materialism, whether "objective" or not? I'm not sure why you continue to introduce religion into this discussion. It is not irrelevant but I believe it takes us off course. Dylan