...but I also can't prove that mushrooms could not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us.

Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

If the concept of consciousness were to fall to science, what would happen to our sense of moral agency and free will? If conscious experience were reduced somehow to mere matter in motion, what would happen to our appreciation of love and pain and dreams and joy? If conscious human beings were just animated material objects, how could anything we do to them be right or wrong?

Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."

I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.