Theory number 3.

[Angrboda]

Well, first off, you're talking to a Taoist, so I don't find any aspect of existence to be cold and sterile (see The Vinegar Tasters).

The exact working and function of science is poorly and incompletely understood, but from a pure methodological standpoint, I think one aspect is clear. Science has developed and prospered by finding ways to insulate scientists from their cognitive biases (from Bacon's market and bazaar to advanced Bayesian and statistical analysis to double blinding to falsification as a criterion of a good theory). The problem with simply letting emotion into the picture has to do with the way cognitive bias works (remember the bias blind spot?). The human mind may think it is seeing things plainly, but it cannot, in and of itself, reliably predict on its own that it is seeing things plainly. And given some of the practical necessities of minds and brains, you're almost better off always betting against the mind's accurate perception of bias and error. It's an epistemologically intractable problem. This is one of the backbones of science, it provides a tool that is not only capable of plain insight into matters, but also quantifiable reliability of those insights. Emotion has no such safeguards. Though I don't think it needs them. We can be both scientific and passionate; I think you're letting the common stereotype of materialistic philosophies as being nihilistic lead you into supposing we need something else. We don't. We could combine our values with a reliable method (science), or we could combine our values with an unreliable method (introspection and traditional spirituality); I think the clear winner here is science.

I'm not suggesting we give up either spirituality or emotion. What I am suggesting is that different tools have different strengths and weaknesses across varying domains. Like it or not, if we want to know about things that are outside of ourselves, science is the man for the job. And unless you're postulating an Idealism or panentheism, g/God does lie outside of you.