Hmm, I'm not so certain. For instance, none of those have a "consequences of the corruption of humans" element, as far as I can remember. There's apocalyptic eschatology in the Norse idea of Ragnarok, okay, yeah... Hrm. It's a big stretch, but whatever, that's not the point. The point is, none of these things, "science" and "religion" especially, are truly the monolithic forces everyone seems to see them as. They are groups of people, nothing more, all with their own, individual spiritual, physical and emotional needs and desires, and their own methods for fulfilling them. The generalizations are killing me...

I'm not thinking as straight as I should be. I'm going to stop here, come back to this in the morning, hopefully with a fresh perspective.

In the end, I'll just say that in response to Magic Magnum's points, nothing exists in a vaccuum. We cannot erase religion from our history, and we wouldn't want to even if we could. It's a part of us. I agree with de Botton, in that secularism (esp secular education) has not stepped up to the challenge of providing a means for true communal love... And that's sad. We shouldn't need dogma to be moral, it's true, but what we do need is a culture of morality... If that culture has its base in religion, but is more important for its moral contributions than its dogmatic ones, what's the problem in that?

(P.S. morality is much more than "stealing, murdering and raping are bad". It involves values of all sorts, many of which are severely lacking in modern secular society, as de Botton states.)