Support for a friend

[GUBU]

Quick answer, for the same reason the smell of my farts aren't a religion.

Long answer, because science is a method of enqiring about the universe usin evidence to postulate theories and improving or discarding them as more or better evidence comes along (eg General Relativity replacing Newton's inverse square law to explain how gravity works). Religion is a method of convincing people that unevidenced assertions about the world are an unchangeable and immutable truth even when the evidence proves the assertions wrong (eg genesis and creatardism in general), and then using that brainwashing to exert power over the poor gullibles you've fooled.

very good... now that you got your knee jerk response out of the way. Now try and answer/account for the defination of "religion" I provided in that very same post you responded to, that would other wise encapsulate the works or dedication to 'science' as being a religious effort.

A) My definition wasn't kneejerk no matter how much you want to dissimulate on that matter. It was consdiered, well researched, accurate and somewhat irreverant and funny.

B) Even by your very much twisted definition of what a religion is, science does not count as a religion. Science is a way of finding out about the world using empirical data and experiments, which has nothing got to do with any sort of religious mentality or practise.

To finalise as to why science isn't a religion I'll quote two scientists, one arreligious and one decidedly religious:

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

As far as I see, such a theory [of the primeval atom] remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in non-singular places in space-time. For the believer, it removes any attempt to familiarity with God, as were Laplace's chiquenaude or Jeans' finger. It is consonant with the wording of Isaiah speaking of the 'Hidden God' hidden even in the beginning of the universe ... Science has not to surrender in face of the Universe and when Pascal tries to infer the existence of God from the supposed infinitude of Nature, we may think that he is looking in the wrong direction.

See that, neither scientist thought science a religion nor did they think that science had any relationship with religion.