[Michael Chui]

I wrote this elsewhere, but I thought people here would want to read it, too.

But my point is that science alone can’t answer this question. Nothing can.

People constantly compare science to religion, expecting science to somehow take the place of religion. It cannot.

Science never answers questions; it asks them. Sometimes it stumbles across a causative relationship. And sometimes that relationship is so intractably powerful that no experiment can break it. We call that a law, and we build our technologies upon it.

Religion, under my dinky amateur less-than-undergraduate psuedo-anthropology, is formed from two tracks: four things. Track A: Necessity. Track B: Explanations. Track A results from our need for survival. If a dragon told you not to eat that mushroom, then you don't eat the freaking mushroom. If you're supposed to harvest on this day and sow on that one, then the fact that God said so helps. Kosher, anyone? Track B results from our need to learn. Why are there rainbows? Why do we live on islands? Why are there mountains? Perhaps, as in Australia, we climbed on top of each other and reached a tiny hole from the womb of the earth. Why not?

Track A condescends into Law, or morality; Track B condescends into Culture Heroes (or Villains). Track A gives you Muhammed, Jesus, Moses, Abhraham, Buddha, Elijah, Jeremiah: Lawgivers. Track B gives you Gilgamesh, Loki, Hermes, the Trickster Fox, fairies, Isaac Luria, Job: Protagonists.

Religion is what you get when you combine them. Where does science fit?

Science is a different way of answering questions. In a sense, it replaces the stories and narratives built up in cultures, slashing diversity with its imperialist hand. As Daniel Cook describes so succinctly, chemistry came from alchemy, obsessed with the quest for magical formulas, like Viagra. (What do you call it, when a grandfather is ready to roll, except eternal life? Philosopher's stone, indeed.)

And science is rejected precisely because people hunger for more than mere answers. A multiplication table has answers, but it's boring. It has to be framed properly. Stories of pacts between Jehovah and Noah are more exciting than refraction. What did Homer do, but write down the story of a very tedious 10-year war during which a bunch of Greeks raped and pillaged a countryside before getting around to sacking a city? How many tellings and embellishments happened before it got to Homer? How completely were gods and halfgods invented and reinvented by this? We barely have evidence Troy existed.

People want their minds engaged, fully. Good stories do this, because they are larger than we can ever comprehend.

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Now, feel free to begin guessing which side I'm attacking. I'm sure someone will.