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Science is not a religion
Ever since Copernicus challenged Christianity’s notion of the universe rotating around the earth with the earth instead rotating around the sun, rationality has challenged Christianity as a belief. It is just as if the question of what that rotates around what can decide whether belief in a God or in rationality is correct. The possibility that neither of these beliefs is correct is not even included as an option.
However, the rational notion of the earth rotating around the sun is not a matter of belief, but of simplicity. This notion is merely simpler than the notion of the universe rotating around the earth is. This fact does not mean that rationality is “The Correct Belief”, but just that it is simpler than Christianity is in this particular case. On the contrary, interpreting this fact as evidence that rationality is “The Correct Belief” is actually wrong, since rationality is either consistently ambiguous or paradoxically contradictory, depending on whether it starts with objects or with classes as axioms. The fact that it is simpler than Christianity in this particular case does not save it from not being able to reach both unambiguity and consistency at the same time. Belief in rationality does thus not save us from the inherent contradiction in belief itself (independently of whether it is in God or in rationality), but is on the contrary just as contradictory as belief in God (or Gods) is. (For example, belief in the rational “tree of life” or “Higgs particle” is just as contradictory as belief in any God(s) is).
The fundamental problem is that rationality (which we traditionally call “science”) is not a belief (ie, a religion), but a practical craft. We can use it to manipulate reality, but not to find out what reality is. So, don’t be fooled by “scientists” that claim to have have the answer of what reality is, like cladists and particle physcists; they are actually contradictory. Instead, rationality will never find out what reality is, because it will never solve Russell’s paradox. Solution of this paradox actually requires reaching perfection (ie, reaching a limes), which, in turn, would stop the world (had it been possible).
Fact is, instead, that only some of the questions we can pose are rational, ie, have rational answers, and it is those that can be tested empirically. The rest is not a matter of rationality, but of belief or opinion. If this boundary between rationality on one hand and belief and opinion on the other is not upheld, then the difference between knowing on one hand and believing and thinking on the other is blurred, and rationality is drawn into the contradictory realm of belief (and thinking). Rationalism thus have an interest in keeping cladistics and Higgs particle-ism on arm-length distance in order to save itself from degeneration.
To a rationalist (like me), science is thus not a matter of belief or opinion, but is just a practical craft. The problem for believing rationalists (like cladists and particle physicists) is to prove that science (ie, knowing) indeed can extend into the realm of belief and opinion.
Source: http://menvall.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/science-is-not-a-religion/
No. Science is not a religion. And while science can and has proven many theorys, it cannot answer every question definitively. But often, scientists pretend it can. I have a problem with that behavior.