"The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao." I so wish that kind of religion would catch on here. It won't, can't, as meditation calls for more than an average fruitfly's attention span, and requires the willingness to inhabit the ambiguous and contradictory nature of truth.

Questions take you places. Answers mean the trip's already over. People here want to have arrived. And they love familiar stories and familiar miracles, experiences that aren't too taxing on the imagination.

Oh yes, we must have priests. That's why the Pentateuch begins with the story justifying I-can't-work-on-the-Sabbath and is full of I-can't-eat-what-you-eat laws, all designed to keep the Hebrews from assimilating in Babylon, which would have kicked the Levites off their gravy train.