Chapters 6 and 7

I have a hard time dealing with much of chapter 6. Although Mason seems to make many different points, he never wants to take one, but instead, offers many explanations and then shrugs and moves on. I especially struggled with the sort of "challenge" he offers at the end of chapter 6. It would seem that a conversation with him about understanding, say, how to cook eggs, would go as follows:

"Do you understand it?"
"Why yes, I understand."
"Do you really understand it?"
"...I think so, yes?"
"But do you REALLY understand it?"
"Well, I thought I did?"

etc etc etc.

I just find it unfair that he offers understanding in such a way that we only understand what we think we understand as a response to any challenge. Everyone thought they understood why people got sick in the year 400, but their understandings were false. Is it possible that additional knowledge will then take our understanding and destroy that as well? Oh yes, but that's saying that all we've worked for so far to gain in understanding can be knocked over easily. I'm not convinced that it's just that simple.
His patronizing tone when describing believing that there are things we'll never understand I found to be rather insulting. I agree that more and more we are finding better modes of understanding and that we should never be satisfied with our level of present knowledge, but I firmly believe that there will always be something that we don't yet understand. Do I necessarily think that there's one thing we'll never understand? Not really, we're always advancing our scope and depth of knowledge about every subject every day. But do I think there always will be something yet to be understood? Absolutely, otherwise we might be able to speculate as to some kind of fence at which we would understand everything entirely.
Perhaps I should give him the benefit and say that he's trying to say that it's up to us if we want to believe that one thing will never be understood and it's fine to find comfort in that. Now, I don't think Christians necessarily need defending, but I can think of a few Christians who believe we will never understand God and to say that it's just a matter of time before that too is uncovered is throwing a wrench into the basis of the religion. To do so is to put oneself at level with God, which is a strict no-no in Judeo-Christianity. It's true that over time, things we once thought to be religious in nature turned out to be causal. We once thought illnesses were caused by evil spirits, then by the will of God, and then by germs. We once thought we were unique and made in God's image. Then we found out that we're descended from primates, then we found out we share half our genome with rats and 1/3 with bananas. So is the next step to say, "We once thought that God existed, then ..."? I think Mason gingerly brings up this option without committing to it.
Then again, perhaps he's an atheist?