"I know, Ness, I've told myself that. But there's something about tracing it all down through reason and then stopping at the source which is faith and clouded, veiled, and not to be tested, not ever to be accosted or any attempt made to set the veil aside. You can go only so far testing faith by scientific method. After a point it just doesn't apply. You can't say it's based on science and then come to rest in a vat of murky faith. The methods are opposed. The methods," Flo went on intently moving back and forth along the railing.

"Science is questing, experimenting, questioning, testing, it's formulating an idea, a theorem or proposition and then testing it, then modifying it according to the most unbiased recording of facts and interpretation and synthesis of those facts as you can manage, then holding it out for skilled colleagues, some of them testy and skeptical, to challenge and sift as well. Then going back and working with it some more and coming up with what you think is a proof and truth and it stays that way only as long as no one else goes farther and proves there's a fault.

And you're glad of that, not bashed or resentful, but glad, because you've been a step and a light along the way, and the science, the quality of good science is the important thing, and the betterment and the understanding that it brings. But religion is entirely different from that."

"Too true, my sage," Iris intoned, then laughed. "Can you imagine some deacon or prelate loving the thought that it's all been redone? Words from saints and gods are supposed to be perfect and final or they're worthless. It's like someone's reputation, or a prizefighter who has to keep a perfect record or he's forgotten. Dropped flat."
"What a comparison," Nessa murmured and bit her thread. She began immediately, in her flowing steady motions, to thread the next color: deep pink.