I get the impression, Avalon, that you must be "on something", judging from the above!LOL!
As regards cooking, all I will say is that humans have done many stupid things over the last million years or so, with no real justification for them - cooking could well be one of those things. As regards cooking itself, the argument re taste is only 1. Other points have been made that cooked-food is addictive, due to its opioid content, so that that explanation is as good, if not better, than the taste aspect, and taste, anyway, is , to a large extent, determined by habit.
Anyway, my point is that cooking could not possibly have contributed to science in the way that fire did. I believe the lamest possible excuse, given by pro-cooking-advocates, is that cooking forced people to sit around and socialise more, because they had to waste so much more of their free time cooking their food, once cooking became a widespread practice.- and this is claimed to have been "a good thing".