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Indeed the job of science is to attempt to understand the 'how', ie. the mechanism of the universe. The 'why', implies choice, that is to say, for what reason is it this way rather than that way. Of necessity, science addresses this too, since this is the mechanism by which we can differentiate between seemingly equally valid alternatives. On the grander scale, science addresses 'why' in the simplest and most logical way: There may be no special reason why, other than were it different, that difference would lead to some subtle to overt change in the 'how', such that the universe would function differently, and preclude our existence. It is the way it is, not by some special cause or reason, but because were it different we wouldn't be here to question it. It may have happened differently a million times before, but only when it works just this way can we arise and ask, 'why and how'. This is a spiritually pause explanation, and gives no comfort nor offers any form of religious solace, and so is basically in no way humanistic, but it is scientifically quite valid and may in actuality be the cold hard fact of the matter. It appears to me, that the human need to be somehow significant, special, or at the centre of it all, is the root of the need to bring a god into cosmology. This has also been the underlying reason why people fervently held onto their belief that the universe revolved around the earth etc. Science must of necessity work from the premise that we are in no way a special case. This is the difference between anthropocentricity, and the anthropic principle. This too is how I would counter the suggestion that science itself is basically arrogant, whilst religion is humble. I would suggest that though any individual scientist may be arrogant (myself included), science at large is humble: it admits that we struggle to understand how it all works, that we may never achieve understanding, but that we are nothing special in the scheme of it all. Religion, I see as somewhat arrogant in that it presupposes that we are so special that some omnipotent being built the whole edefice just to house us in comfort.
That the one scheme is historically associated with the other gives credence to neither, but is an artifact of the growth and progress of human thought on these questions, from requiring a supernatural explanation for things we don’t understand, and a source of supernatural comfort in our diminutive aloneness, to struggling to face our aloneness and unimportance despite our basic human egotism, and realizing that positing a supernatural explanation for that which we do not understand is not a satisfactory mechanism for comprehending the world. Consider how the goal posts for our need to invoke the supernatural, have moved. For example, we used to require a god to hurl each and every inexplicable lightning bolt, now there are few people of even moderate education who don’t grasp in some way, however simplified, that it is a byproduct of well understood and completely natural electrical processes in the atmosphere. Not that long ago it was heresy to suggest that the world wasn’t hand built by god some 5000 odd years ago, now even the educated devout push the need to invoke a god back to the moment of the inception of the universe, and our understanding now even posits natural mechanism by which this may have occurred. They may not be the correct mechanisms and the theory may be flawed, but they are independent of our own existence and that we can conceive them is itself a human triumph and a human wonder.
The fact that old science tends to hang on to its old theories and obstruct new science, as shown in the afore mentioned New Scientist letter, is an artifact of human nature, and a modern microcosm of the same dichotomy between invoking a supernatural force to account for the inexplicable, and trying to explain it by natural means. Eventually, should the new science (new theories) have true merit, the weight of its evidence will build up to the point where the old science (old theories) crumble, and a paradigm shift occurs, allowing for a progression to new ideas. However, invoking the supernatural to explain any part of it, absolutely halts this process, since it can’t be known or questioned, and this seems to me far worse than even the argument ridden, ego dominated and painfully slow advances of science.
Please forgive me if my concepts are less than clear, but I tend to write these posts off on the fly as it were, which doesn't always make for pelucid expression.
Daemon.
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