Religion's Epitaph

That's what I thought as I finished reading the following quoted testimony of a physicist, Brian Greene, in his The Fabric of the Cosmos.

The "meaning" of Religion has been politicized into meaninglessness. It was a universal search for "the truth", and made enough progress for our species that we evolved the scientific method using faith and experiment, and the freakish ability for mathematics.

This book doesn't mention religion much, except in incidentals. The issue is pure and vibrant reality of Space, Time and Matter.

Well, here's the part that feels a respectful and proud epitaph to protoscience. Science knows its pain.

... Promising ideas, more often than not, lead nowhere. That's the nature of scientific research. Yet, even during periods of minimal progress, I've found that the effort spent puzzling and calculating has only made me feel a closer connection to the cosmos. I've found that you can come to know the universe not only by resolving its mysteries, but also by immersing yourself within them. Answer are great. Answers confirmed by experiment are greater still. But even answers that are ultimately proven wrong represent the result of a deep engagement with the cosmos – an engagement that sheds intense illumination on the questions, and hence on the universe itself. Even when the rock associated with a particular scientific exploration happens to roll back to square one, (like Sisyphus) we nevertheless learn something and our experience of the cosmos is enriched.

From Chapter 1, Roads to Reality; Coming of Age in Space and Time