Science is Just Another Religion
All the ardent validations and engrossing intellectual forays notwithstanding, the actuality is that - at it's foundation - science is also very largely a belief system similar to religion. As a matter of fact it can be shown that science is simply the most popular religion of this era.
Only for people who don't understand science. Among scientists and educated people, science has its position because it works, and the fact that it works is an empirically testable and falsifiable proposition.
Religion is founded entirely on untested claims. Science tests its own claims as surely and as regularly as it tests scientific theories.
In the 1950s, at the height of the polio epidemic, Sister Kenny opened a now-famous clinic to treat polio by massaging the limbs of its sufferers. At the same time, using the methods of science, Jonas Salk created a vaccine. There is no more apt comparison of religion and science. To put this in contemporary terms, if you have cancer, would you prefer a massage or a vaccine?
Religion is based on perfect confidence and no evidence. Science is based on perpetual skepticism of everything including science itself, and the only reason science prevails is because it meets the requirements of the most skeptical observer.
Obviously for a disenchanted religious believer who wants to jump ship, science looks like another belief system. In the same way, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But to a scientist, constitutionally inclined to doubt everything, science delivers something religion cannot provide — results.