Richard Dawkins has a nice essay on science, mystery, and religion.

The creationists' fondness for "gaps" in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don't know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don't work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God's gift to Kansas.

I wish it were as simple as this. Dawkins is merely expressing his frustrations here and not shedding much light on the problem. Religion doesn't arise from a fondness for gaps; the god-hypothesis serves as a way to bring coherence to a complicated set of phenomena, though mystery is indeed a crucial part of the hypothesis. The real question is why do they stop short of continuing the search for complete and coherent explanations. Why remain stuck on what proves to be an inconsistent hypothesis that is noticably incongruent with the rest of what we know? Why remain so recalcitrant to experience and expriment? It's not the gaps the religious adore, it's a particular kind of gap-filler. Dennett does a much nicer job of explaning the nature and pervasive power of the god-hypothesis, mystery and religion in his book Breaking the Spell.

Read he rest of Dawkin's essay at onegoodmove: Filling the holes

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