1)true and known to be true ( or at least very highly confirmed)
2) shed light on the phenomena that are being explained

This is precisely what big bang meets but explanation in terms of supernatural person does not. You cannot know whether the universe was created so you cannot know whether such explanation is true ; simply no way to test such a claim .
Secondly when you say ‘god did it ’ you are trying to use explanation that is more obscure , more in need of explanation than the thing you want explained ( you are not explaining why your camera is not working when you say gremlin did it ) but this is precisely how supernatural explanations work.
This point is made by D.Hume in his ‘dialogues concerning natural religion’.As far as I can tell there is no answer to this criticism Hume makes.

Perhaps we need to look to the ‘mad’ for advice? Certain ‘disorders’ cause the individual to peer beneath the veil of ‘humanity’ and confront the eternal void. We have amble labels for these poor folks. Prisons are full of individuals who think they understand that life is a ‘joke’ or as some say, ‘cosmic joke’ … so I’m saying that if one really believes in no Higher Power, then for the most part evolution has ‘kept that secret’ from all beings, until … until the human mind crossed over into self awareness. Then the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, we need this powerful brain to survive, because our puny bodies can’t stand against other more powerful animals, yet that powerful brain has a down side, it can now see the void of nothingness, and this too becomes a feared predator. All the “festooned laws and customs” keep that new predator at bay, and all of science and philosophy are but 2×4s nailed to the door in order that that door to the void is never really opened. A few poor souls manager by chance or circumstance to open that door, and all the rest of us pity these poor souls as they decend into ‘madness’ …

The heart of the question, if no “God” then we are simply another accumulation of atoms that came together by chance and evolution and have a very brief existence before dissolving and disassembling into the original atoms that constucted us, and that is it. Birth, life, death. Period. No rhyme or reason. And yes, we can sit about and study all this, and even philosophize about it, but again, we are just hammering more 2×4s to that door from which behind is the ultimate reality—nothing. And after all, isn’t it Truth that we say we are seeking?

The laws we have are the product of thousands of years of contentious negotiation. They were not conferred upon us by the last millennium’s favorite text, nor were they derived from a collection of axioms.

Our lives are bounded, fastened and festooned by laws and customs we and our predecessors brought into existence, which we are at liberty to modify at will. At least in theory, this is an experimental discipline.

And, of course, at every moment, each of us is both the designer of the experiment and one of the subjects. We ought to insist that our various polities extend their planning horizons at least into the immediate future. Now that we’ve scraped the last fish from our oceans, where will our next dish come from?

suppose you are about to steal someone’s information from their computer and someone said to you ’ how would you like it if someone did that to you ? This is somehow supposed to stop you but why ?
The answer is because if you hated it when someone did it to you you admit that she has a reason not do it to you. If you admit that, you have to ask what that reason is. It cannot be that it is you that she is hurting of all people in the world but rather a more general reason anyone in her position including you , if you were in that position has also.
But if anyone in the position where they can steel info from someone elses computer has for not stealing it then that applies to you too. In other words you have a reason not to steal the stuff. As Nagel points out this is a matter of simple consistency .
This is Kantian because it involves the idea that acting morally involves acting from a nonpersonal perspective ; moral point of view is universal point of view , kind of like when you do math : you reason as a member of a community of reasoners who can see that 2+2=4 .

(btw recognition of how powerful an approach this is is the recognition of the roman catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas that this approach can be absorbed by RC church ; in fact Aquinas adopts and incorporates almost without modification . Aristotle’s ethics into Christian approach )

#25: “Danish position is amoral because there can be no right/wrong without belief in god”

Let me attempt to clarify what I am saying, it isn’t a question of “there can be no right/wrong without belief …” it is “there is no need, other than selfishness (and group survival), for right/wrong …”

I posit that the “god” of the secular world is: you and I and everyone else. When one doesn’t believe in a higher power/God/Creator, then one either believes in self and other ‘selves’ as arbitrators of how we will survive, either as individuals, or as groups.

What Aristotle is doing is creating an intellectual fiction in order to create the most comfort for the most folks. Are these ‘fictions’ real? As in the essences of Plato? Or are they evolutionary constructs that these clever animals (humans) came up with in order to live in packs.

I am saying, if no Higher Intelligency, no eternal ‘essences’ floating about awaiting for us to grab, then no ultimate ‘game plan’ … it is all us animals attempting to survive, simply because evolution hardwired us to attempt to survive, and evolution has shown that seeking comfort (being free from pain, extremes in clime, predators) raises the chance for survival. So the evolving human brain was perfect up until we moved from small hunting and gathering units, once we became creatures of the pack, then this now highly evolved brain was able to come up with stragegies for moving from small packs to large herds. Other herd animals didn’t have this ‘problem’ because their brains had not evolved to the point where they had self awareness, and all the problems that that creates.
…
gotta go, work to do in the vineyard today.
Shalom, Bro. Bartleby

First of all, you sound like a speciesist and seem to have an antropocentric point of view.

Second, ethics must not and aren’t in most cases derived from “economical or game-theoretical considerations”. How that is explains itself if you study ethics a year or two.

Third, even if ethics were derived the way you suggest, you could still think of hypothetical cases where you wouldn’t accept the outcome. A classy example is the one with aliens visiting earth that start treating us as we treat animlas in the meatindustry. The fact that the aliens and we do not “interact with each other in a mutually comprehensible fashion” (say because of the aliens non-interest) doesn’t prove anything or make it more justifiable to treat us as slaves.

Somewhere maybe a line has to be drawn on the suffering of animals for our comfort. Just seems that compassion for vertebrates seems a particularly human “apartheid.” Or maybe antennae don’t feel.

The basic notion of reciprocity (whether expressed by the Golden Rule, the Categorical Imperative, or Rapoport’s “Tit for tat”) only enjoins cooperation within populations which continually interact with each other in a mutually comprehensible fashion.

In practical terms this suggests nearly nothing about how other animals should be treated. It’s less reciprocity than lifelong familiarity that gives me an easy relationship with most dogs. Pigeons don’t seem to care that I yield to them, and I’ve retaliated by eating one (rôti au cacao). Pigs, cows and fish in general are nearly as unresponsive, and I’m untroubled by eating them and wearing their skins.

We’re more likely to reach consensus on how to treat our fellow creatures by considering our health, and taking a long term perspective on economics and the environment, than by pondering the bounds posed by the various moral obligations which one might choose to assume.

Taking a long enough view requires us to save as many species as we can, if only for the delight of future generations.