I have often thought this myself. Part of why science and religion are compatible is that they satisfy different needs. One addresses the heart, and one the mind. But neither is happy unless they are the explanation for everything. Science, for all its truth and utility, is as much a religion as religion is. Because it is relied upon as a worldview instead of a tool.
Disagreed, and heavily. Science doesn't attempt to explain the unexplainable; on the contrary, its followers are typically annoyed with people who try to do that. If you'd seriously say something like "science is just as much a religion as a religion is," I think it's likely that you lack an understanding of the exact differences between science and religion:
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Science changes. It makes no assumptions about anything until it has observed evidence for them, and even then it simply makes tentative statements about possible rules of the universe based on patterns it has observed repeatedly. The certainty of science functions in degrees, like a parabolic curve in geometry. The more evidence we gather the closer and closer it gets to becoming certain, but it never quite actually makes that last step to 100% certainty. If new information arises that calls into question the validity of our previous scientific explanations, we must investigate--and sometimes, we will discover that we were previously wrong (or at least, not exactly right) and amend our belief system accordingly. If science were anywhere near as rigid as religion, we would still be insisting that Newtonian physics explains everything in our physical world perfectly, even though quantum mechanics has since arisen and shown evidence that Newtonian physics laws break down at the quantum level.
Science is inductive reasoning.
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Religion does not change. At least not until a conflicting scientific view becomes so widespread that continuing to argue against it would threaten the Church's membership by making them appear so stupid that no one wants to associate with them any longer. So they bend over backwards, backpedal, bullshit, claim that God has intentionally deceived us in order to test us, etc.; anything to attempt to reconcile this new information with their utterly inflexible dogma. (See
Copernicus and Galileo.) Religion starts from an arbitrary premise, creates arbitrary explanations for observable phenomena and then attempts to force the two to fit together in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. Religion claims absolute certainty that it is correct on all of its points, and not only is it hostile toward any attempts to claim otherwise, it historically has repeatedly, actively attempted to squelch any ideas which may contradict its dogma, for purposes of keeping the masses from discovering the logical contradiction.
Religion wants to be deductive reasoning, and is very uncomfortable with any degrees of certainty less than 100%.
It is, of course, quite possible to misuse science as a dogmatic, deductive form of reasoning and try to rely upon it as an absolute worldview (Dawkins comes to mind.) This is rather silly. Any true scientist knows that his worldview is incomplete and is not only open to new and conflicting information, but in fact thrives on it.