sorcery for a new century

Many of the analogies utilized by the recent glut of atheist authors Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens depend upon a comparison between religious believers today and the witchcraft prevalent in primitive tribes today and in puritan settlements of the seventeenth century. The thought is that just as we no longer burn people as witches today or attribute rain storms to the favor of rain deities, we should forsake current religious beliefs that calls us to adopt other unscientific claims. We now know that rain is caused by a complex formula of moisture condensation in the atmosphere. There is no need to attribute it to the gods.

But, does our ability to describe how rain takes place begin to describe the reason for our weather patterns? Even those rainstorms that we can predict do not contain the rational for their occurrence within the conditions for their occurrence. Is the reason that a tree grows out of a seed due only to the presence of dirt, moisture, and sun that are necessary elements of growth? If we can explain how something occurs is this the same thing as explaining why it occurs? Some scientists claim to have explained emotional pain through a description of brain chemistry and neural movement. Does knowing how we come to feel deep emotional anguish provide any rational for why certain things hurt us. Would effective scientific explanation (if we can assume that this modern conception can be translated to accessible language) to tribal animists of how rain develops give them any sufficient reason to think that prayers do not contribute to this scientific process? Does explaining the how go the distance to explaining the why?

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man". - Albert Einstein