No Faith Here

http://www.gazette.com/opinion/religion-96744-science-leftmain.html
A good explanation of why science is not a religion:

“Given that science and religion are often perceived as being at odds, asking whether science is just another religion may seem strange. After all, how could things cast as polar opposites, faith and reason, be the same? But, more and more I’m finding the assertion, “science is just another religion,” to be a common denunciation of the scientific enterprise.

To begin with, the use of the word “just” in the statement above would seem to slur religion as much as science. By saying “just,” one seems to imply that you can reduce science by bringing it “down to” the level of religion. This disregards the fact that religion and the spiritual life it supports are important parts of the human experience. Most people would describe themselves as having a spiritual life. Additionally, religious practices are a unique and almost universal aspect of humanity. Then again, it’s not clear to me that detractors of science want to impugn religion in the same breath as science, so for now, I’ll drop the adverb “just” and leave the question thus: is science another religion?

The chief aim of science is to give a naturalistic account of the world. A naturalistic explanation does not require any forces standing outside the natural chain of events to explain things. While scientists may not understand how everything works, they resist postulating entities that stand outside of nature to explain nature.

Religions, on the other hand, assume that there is another existence standing either above or in contrast to our physical existence. Sometimes we refer to this as a spiritual existence. But, because we see it as existing beyond our physical existence, we believe that there is no need to explain it by appeals to physical processes. Indeed, most religions allow that our spiritual existence simply is. And so, religions rely upon a mystical understanding of our existence.

Thus, these two perspectives are thus fundamentally at odds with one another. That is not to say that people who do science cannot also be religious. Many are. But, scientists — by nature — do not appeal to God or other entities standing outside of nature to explain nature. So, by itself, science lacks a fundamental characteristic of religious beliefs and therefore cannot be considered a religion.

I think what science deriders are trying to say is that science is another belief system. And here, the word “just’ makes more sense. If “science is just another belief system,” then it is no more worthy of our esteem than any other belief system. Say, for instance, are scientific theories of the big bang on par with the belief of the Mansi people of Siberia that the Earth was created when two loons dove into primeval waters and brought a piece of the bottom up to the surface where it grew into the Earth?

This criticism of science as “just another belief system” was once common among some philosophers of science in the 1980s and ’90s. And while this criticism doesn’t carry much weight in philosophical circles today, its demise is instructive.
Consider, if science is just another belief system, it is unlike any other belief system ever imagined. First, scientific beliefs are dynamic. Unlike other belief systems that tend to be static, our scientific understanding of the world is constantly being elaborated upon.

Sometimes, this gives the people the heebie jeebies. Remember the uproar in some quarters when Pluto was demoted from a planet? “Can’t scientists make up their minds?!”

Second, most belief systems only reference a core text or authority. Science, on the other hand, adds to its beliefs by determining which beliefs best fit with observation.

This accounts for science’s dynamic nature — it is always being updated and elaborated upon to make way for new observations — but also insures that science is self-correcting. New observations make for better understanding.

Lastly, and this is what is truly amazing, science works. If we seek reliable and useful knowledge about the world, then science has proven itself extremely productive. The incredibly rich body of useful knowledge that science generates makes it difficult for even philosophers to argue that science is just another belief system.”

I’ve never been able to understand the argument that science is just another religion, especially when it comes from the religious. As the article points out, this would degrade all religions.