In addition, there are many things that are not directly testable via the scientific method, such as the age of the Earth and the origin of species, so I would hesitate to label them as being true science.
i attended a lecture and posed a question to the lecturer about the difference between science and religion. in his view, the biggest difference between the two is that religion tends to be incorrigible, whereas science is by its nature... corrigible.
science isn't in the business of claiming truth. yes, science is about finding truth, but part of the scientific principal is that we might not be able to discern truth, so we proceed believing the most seemingly accurate theory until a better one comes along.
i'm not sure if i agree. i used to place the central difference on science's empiricism (focusing on measuring preceptible reality to discern its laws, rather than proceeding on assumption and apperant truth). but religions and religious ideologues are often enough empirical after a fashion. the buddha, for example, set out to find release from suffering: it's said that he lived as a prince, then as a beggar and ascetic. it was only after surveying a many possible paths and observing himself and others along the way that he developed his "theories" of the arya-dharma (the four noble truths) and pratityasamutpada (codependant origination). from what i understand it's believed jesus disappeared for several years (like 10 or so?) of his early adult life; i don't think it's too difficult to imagine him doing a lot of soul searching during this time(messiah or not).
i think the biggest difference is what happens afterwards: the ideas get intot he hands of religious institutions, and they want things to stay the same because as long as they do, religious-institutional leaders remain in power. religions do innovate, but these innovations tend to form new demoninations or whole new religions: yet more division and nepotism. i think the same thing happens in science, yes, but at such an accelerated rate that individuals can see it happen in their own lifetimes. what was the last time there was a major innovation in christianity? the reformation? maybe mormonism in the U.S.?
there are certainly theologians who investigate questions, and who don't believe they've uncovered an eternal truth (or enough of it), but on the popular level religious followers tend to believe they believe eternal truths. profession scientists usually don't believe they've uncovered any eternal truths, but rather developed principles that are 'good enough for the purpose at hand.' but lay-people tend to fall prey to a common fallacy:
reification.
reification is to treat a concept, idea or theory as if it were a real thing. 'the masses,' as it were, don't often appriciate the subtle difference between a useful concept and a concrete object. 'society' and 'the mind' are concepts. we can't directly prove their existence, no matter how obvious they seem. reification isn't always obvious, either.
and to an extent, what laypeople believe does determine the course of both religious and scientific institutions, but herein lies the major difference if there is one. churches retain power and profit by remaining the same; their appeal to the masses comes from claiming some universal and absolute truth (which isn't to say those truths aren't universal or absolute: that's beside the point).
scientific institutions bring themselves power and profit, by contrast, through innovation. people 'believe' in sceince because it innovates and discoveres the new. by belief i mean 'expend personal resources and support to the effect of helping the scientific institution continue to exist.' among private research companies, profit comes from new technologies, medicines, etc, and at the university it comes from new ideas and concepts in addition to new technologies and medicines.
it might seem that they're at odds with eachother, but i don't think that has to be the case. modern religion tends to provide people with a kind of fulfilment science cannot. i think that's a good thing, because some Very Important Questions cannot be answered by science. most so-claimed "scientific" investigations into things such as the power of prayer, the mass-change of the body after death (supposedly representing the departure of the soul), etc., are usually far from being truly scientific. they don't fulfil criteria for falsifiability or reproducability, method is haphazard at best, no prior research on the subject is done, no tests are done for spuriousness...
and let's leave it there. social science often fails in some of these respects, too, but at least social scientists acknowledge these goals and try to fulfil them whenever they can.
but, too, religious explanations in many ways are being shown faulty. the earth positively is not 5,000 years old; it's much older. there are debates about the exact age that pop up, but it's agreed among scientists and even many christians (most, perhaps) that biblical history isn't accurate in that respect. true, the only things they have to disprove that history are, at their core, theoretical. however, validating biblical history would, for them at least, not require material evidence in support of that timeline, but also evidence that contradicts more conclusions reached by dozens of different methods and types of evidence.
should religion change? perhaps it's presumptuous for an atheistic agnostic such as myself to suggest an answer, but i think yes. don't throw out biblical history, but keep and and pass it on for what it is: a belief rooted in and important to cultural history that was important to our development into who we are, and that might provide important allegorical instruction, but that we no longer believe to be historically accurate.
and i think science should change too. scientists have a way of braketing out the connection of their work to other parts of human life. i personally feel some atheists should be more supportive of religious and spiritual people. we're all human, and no matter how little we might see eye-to-eye at times, none of us are stupid. we do the things we do, make the decisions we make, and believe the things we believe for reasons that i think are usually valid and good. if your beliefs lead you to a greater peak of compassion and love, patience and understanding, or peace and openness of mind and heart, it's a good thing. to be sure, there certainly are scientists who do reach out to religious organizations and individuals in an attempt to build a stronger common ground, and vice versa.
but part of the future also lies in lay people. human beings tend to deal poorly with change, and especially with something so foundationally important as cosmological and ethical belief, it doesn't come easily. but rapid change is characteristic not just of scientific settings, but capitalistic socieities in general. as Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
personally, i don't think this idea has to mean 'people will be forced to see that there is no god.' it parllels what i tried to outline above: traditional religious developed in a time when stasis was the means to retain power, whereas in modern society, power is retained through change (which needn't even represent improvement; just look at the fashion industry). rather than meaning 'we are forced to give up god,' i think this is really saying 'we will be forced to accept the traditional aphorism, God helps those who help themselves.'
in medival Europe, being Christian wasn't a choice. yes, you could chose to renounce god, but you didn't have to commit to accepting Him. you were presumed a god-fearing Christian as part and parcel of being presumed normal, and the human tendancy is that if others presume you to be something, it's probably true (since we learn to see ourselves through the reactions of others). you can see this reflected in English nominclature: Christian-ity vs. Buddh-ism, Juda-ism, Hindu-ism, Tao-ism and (the archaic form) Mohammedan-ism. In English the suffix -ity connotes a basic characteristic the same as the suffix -ness: individual-ity is the same thing as individual-ness, those characteristics that make a person or thing unique. -Ism, by contrast, connotes ideology, propoganda or belief: individual-ism is a more pervasive centrality of the individual in daily life. Christian-ity was a characteristic of a normal, healthy, rational and Good person, whereas all those other -isms were just ideology and propoganda. if it were level, we'd either be saying Christianism or Buddhity (etc.) (and Buddhity is just fun to say).
but in modern times, religion is always a choice: people in the west typically have full (if rarely accurate) awareness of other religions and beliefs, that they can chose to follow them if they accept the social consequences, and even when they chose to be traditional with a religion that's tradtional among their people, it's still most often constructed and understood in terms of personal choice (there are studies showing this, though it doesn't seem to be nearly as much the case outside of the U.S. and Europe; look up Richard Madsen if you're genuinely curious). this paradigm might also help explain the rise of fundimentalism across religions vz. increased awareness of the choices (and compormises) that are made with respect to traditions in particular religions.
i think that we'll "at last compelled to face with sober senses (our) real conditions of life, and (our) relations with (our) kind" because we're now living through the death rattles of our religions' previous incarnations. these institutions are attempting to cling to past ways based on violence, intellectual elitism, exclusivity, and fear. our societies are becomming global, and there's very little we can do to stop this. i think this will contribute to a trend towards both deism and transcendentalism.
deism is the belief that god or some omnipotent cosmic force created the earth (or universe) and did/does nothing more than that. he doesn't interfere. many of America's founders were deists. since the big bang theory has gained so much momentum, I can imagine this form of belief becoming stronger in the coming years.
one variation i've seem more is that god as the ultimate science. some posters here have even said such, that god laid down the physical principles we discover through science and works miracles through those (as we call them) natural laws.
transcendentalism is the idea that certain truths and values transcend particular religions and are more or less universal. this is the foundational philosophy of the Unitarian-Universalist church, though it dates to the European Romanic period.
of course, to individuals who consider themselves 'true believers', the idea of engineering religion is appaling. i don't think it has to be that conscious: the violent and archaic aspects of relgion might die off as an unintentional matter of their development.
however, i think fundamentalisms are another offshot of this process: think of it like divergent evolution. the 'mutation' occurs because something about our global social environment lends to it. the fate of fundamentalisms will depend on how global societies continue to develop: if the enviornment favors fundamentalist traits... we're screwed. but if we can create a social environment that's more befitting spiritual expressions of love and fraternity, i think they'll die off as a matter of natural course.
what those factors that'll influence the development of our cultures and relgions, i'll leave you to speculate on. i think i've already pontificated enough.
edit: one more point. modern science developed as a Christian endeavor. the enlightenment philosophies that gave rise to science originally had to do with discerning the nature of god and his creation. to uncover better truths about reality was to bring human beings closer to an understanding of god. it was from this open-eyed approach that western society began to widely question the existence of god. just some food for thought.
anyway, sorry for such long posts.
