Johann wrote:
However all religions claim to answer a number of questions.
Undoubtedly.
However, there are two kinds of religions:
Type 1 which says "Here, take this faith capsule, and be satisfied. Don't ask questions, or you will be impaled with toothpicks in Hell when you die, and we will disptach you there right now in the most gruesome way contrivable".
Type 2 which says "do the analysis yourself, and verify if you come to this conclusion we reached. If you don't agree, choose a different answer available elsewhere."
Now, obviously, the INSTRUMENTS of knowledge available 5000 years ago did not include microscopes, telescopes, EM spectral analyser etc.
So, their instruments were Perception, Inference and Testimony.
Of the three, Perception and Testimony were subjective, but Inference was not.
Inference was considered most primary, because that was falsifiable to an extent through counter-logic by ANYONE willing to and capable of, etc.
So, the Type 2 religions definitely belong in a separate category.
Falsifying their grand conclusions about Absolute Reality must surely be done by Cosmologists and Particle Physicists who seek to answer, and uncover, precisely this same reality.
That's the basic point.
I won't discuss your point on consciousness because the word consciousness in English is nowhere close to the notion of Cit/Chaitanya/Prajna in Sanskrit.
When like magnetic poles are brought close to each other, they repel each other.
Do they have neurobiological appoaratus ?
How are they "aware" of the existence of a like pole ?
When there is a change of temperature, the thermostat reacts. How ? It doesn't have a brain to be aware of temperature changes.
The deeper you go into the orbital and spin structure, you will be further amazed at their "awareness". The EPR paradox is a case in point.
People who seek neurobiological explanations for Cit don't perhaps realize that.
Lastly, the Type 2 religions like Vedanta don't have problems with the "scientific" explanations, beginning with cosmic, and later earthly and evolutionary details.
If you look the "evolution" of life on earth, is it simply a faster mutation than the evolution/mutation of the earthly constituents like say river beds and coastal patterns ( which resemble fractals etc )etc.
Everything is changing to a different degree, some subtly, some blatantly.
The Vedantic concept of "evolution" is not restricted to "life", but of everything, like a reverse Asvattha tree - through a process called Vivarta, where the change is merely in form, not substance.
This is very much like how all evolutionary mutations can be conceptually described as a form of Julia Set F(x) = x-square + C, where C is the indeterminate constant of complexity introduced by the system at every iteration.
And the constant of complexity is introduced due to spontaneous breaks in symmetry of the scalar field.
Which discipline of science will this fall under for falsification or verification ?
Ultimately, at both macroscopic or microscopic level, it is in the domain of Cosmology and Quantum Physics, no ?
The "theories" of intermediate steps using genetic algorithms are - although definitely interesting at the practical level - serve really no purpose at the ultimate level of reality under consideration.
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So, now our kind is a majority on this board. 
What do you do when you want to celebrate and get a little rowdy? Seriously. Are you a yoga master or something like that?