One of the questions from this week's Anthropology homework:

7. What are “science” and “religion” and how does American culture use each?

Oh yeah, two topics I can (and often do) go on and on about in one question. I felt a little stirring in my loins when I first read it, like a good-smelling woman had just passed nearby. Here is my answer: 

Science is the use of rational thought, observation and experimentation to explain physical and natural phenomena. We use it in every aspect of our lives. The cumulative knowledge created by science is responsible for the foods we produce and eat, the structures and artifacts we build, the fuels we burn and the medicines we use. I believe science is a direct result of the evolution of human consciousness, the ability to ask ourselves the question: “Why?”
Religion stems from early man’s inability to answer that question. The same human consciousness that asks the question seems incapable of accepting “I don’t know” as an answer. So out of fear, we make stuff up. We explain away our own lack of knowledge by attributing events we don’t understand to invisible cloud beings. We use religion to help us accept the fact that scary bad things often happen to ourselves and people we care about. We use religion to nullify the scariest thing of all; we deny death.

One of my personal growth goals for some time has been to stop being so dismissive of religion, but it's obvious from that answer I'm still failing miserably. I just can't help myself. While I have a great deal of respect for religious individuals and the way most of them live their lives, I have a real problem with organized religion and it's purveyors; the proselytizers, preachers, priests, witnesses, clerics and missionaries. And pretty much anybody who comes around knocking on my door to share "the word" with me; ladies in long shapeless dresses and white shoes, men in suits with really soft handshakes. The worst are the ones with the feverish look in their eyes who want to tell me about their own conversations with the invisible cloud-daddy. Sales pitches make me edgy anyway, and "C'mon, believe like me and you'll live forever in happy land" is the ultimate sales pitch.

But what really bothers me is how damned effective they are at selling it to the world's most vulnerable. Everywhere the poor and weak and downtrodden don't have any real hope, the false hope of religion thrives. It feeds on desperation. And of course, once you've got religion and desperation, all it takes is a little touch of crazy and you've completed the fire triangle of fanaticism. From there you can get anything from standing on a street corner speaking in tongues to walking into a restaurant wearing a belt of plastic explosives.