From a reader:

Jonah,
From Greg Easterbrook of Wired Magazine:
“Look up into the night sky and scan for the edge of the cosmos. You won’t find it– nobody has yet. Instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope’s deep-field scanner have detected at least 50 billion galaxies, and every time the equipment is improved, more galaxies farther away come into focus. Space may be infinite –not merely vast, but infinite– encompassing an infinite number of galaxies with an infinite number of stars.
“All this stuff– enough to form 50 billion galaxies, maybe fantastically more– is thought to have emerged roughly 14 billion years ago in less than a second, from a point with no physical dimensions. Set aside the many competing explanations of the big bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing.”
In light of the foregoing, I ask: how are religion and science, at the most fundamental, the most profound, different? The scientist will tell you that his faith, unlike religious faith, isn’t absolute, in that he will change theories when a better one comes along. It might be unscientific to suggest this, but is this not an absolute faith in man as scientist? Where religion and science differ is that the religious refuse to grant the scientist a first free miracle, after which the scientist in his erudition can explain everything. If there is a God, He demands faith of us, and, call me crazy, but I think He demands it from both the religious and the scientist alike. Faith is the toll we pay to live this live.
To me, simply living in a universe that is 14 billion years old is too staggering a prospect to accept with equanimity. Eighty years as compared to 14 Billion does not even constitute the blink of an eye. Perhaps, as they age the Jillettes of this world will recognize that the really important question is not how but why.