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Originally Posted by Michael Chui 
Of course you do. You don't know any math stories. I think math is boring, too, except for the minor detail that I'm not very good at it, that I respect it, and thus it feels like a worthy challenge I'm not quite yet up to.
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If educators would like to make math interesting again, they would teach it in the way that it was discovered and/or utilized. For example, my math education ended with trig. Here we have people flipping around numbers related to a triangle for no apparent reason. Years later, I read about how trigonometry was used by sailors to determine distance based on the stars. If someone had started with that basis, I would probably be a mathematician.
Math educators treat people like they are computers. Here is said data in textbook, manually enter data, test for integrity and feedback. People don't learn that way. The people who discovered the various branches of mathematics didn't discover it that way.
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Mathematics fits well with religion; the Pythagorean cult, numerology, gematria, neo-Platonism, and other quasi-disciplines that fly false flags. I once read an excellent book about a numerologist con artist; it was the compilation of a long-running column in... the L.A. Times, I think. It was amazing. Unfortunately, I can remember nothing useful in finding it again.
You'd be impressed at how many mathematical hoops people jump through when they believe in it. Real astrology is essentially a gigantic trigonometric problem, with a dab of fantasy at the beginning and at the end. A real astrologist is a mathematician. (Not that this legitimizes astrology itself, but I'm just saying.  )
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Considering your first post begs the Socratic method, this is an interesting counter to your own assertion that religion will not replace science. If it were not for those "cults", we wouldn't have mathematics.
How about in economics? We have these specific numbers arbitrarily assigned to determine who gets a bmw and who starves to death. Is that any more fanciful than numerology? You're right: it is amazing what hoops we jump through when people believe in numbers.
Mathematics is applied in a variety of situations, but the overall usage has nothing to do with math itself. Therefore, math doesn't determine whether it is significant or not. You are essentially calling the forest for the trees.
In regards to the real topic of this thread, I was considering how all branches of knowledge are an extension of our basic human faculties. The hard sciences are an extension of our ability to reason. Soft science appeals to our investigative nature. Theology and philosophy are an extension of our intuition and methods to reveal the mystery to ourselves. In any one of these branches, we use all of these faculties. We are not insects.
I think religion or spirituality will not go away because we need to make assumptions and trust our feelings before we can come up with a reasonable understanding of something. We feel/experience first and then come up with a logical explanation afterward. What is called magic in one age is technology in the next. If we don't have any magic, there will be no new technology. This is where I disagree with the dogmatic scientists.