What's the punch line here? Physiologically, it doesn't come cheap being a bastard 24 hours a day. - Robert Sapolsky

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means that you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

The notion of the psychopathology of the shaman works just as readily in understanding the roots of major Western religions as well.

The far-from-original point I will try to make now should seem obvious: There is an unsettling similarity between the rituals of the obsessive-compulsive and the rituals of the observantly religious.